I have a newish Mexican made Fender Standard Stratocaster and I was wondering if you people knew anyway to improve the sustain on these? I tried an 80s Blade superstrat thing yesterday, and it just rang on forever. I don't want to do anything drastic really, I set it up with 4 or five springs and that doesnt really make any difference. I use Daddario 11's too, but it still doesn't have that lovely chimey ringing sound. The action's pretty high as well, so I'm stumped. Any suggestions? I hear that messing around with the bridge screws can sometimes make a bit of difference, but I'm a bit skeptical..
This is a tough one. Some guitars of the same exact model have more sustain than others due to a number of factors: differences in densities and resonances in body wood, neck joint integrity, trem pivot point integrity, setup, trem spring tension (esp if bend-down only vintage Strat trem design) and even overrall physical condition. For guitars that merely "look" somewhat the same, the number of variables increases to include bridge mass (incl. the interia block), type of fret, neck woods (esp. maple versus mahogany), fingerboard materials...
Things you will be able to check and change on your guitar:
Pickups: Raise them or lower them. Too low will diminish the output, and too high causes Stratitis (google this term), which kills fundamental tones but pulling too hard on the string and creating a node point over the pup. The neck pup is the biggest offender. This will kill tone and sustain.
Neck joint integrity: The pocket should be clean and smooth, providing a large contact area with the neck. Big offenders here are paint runs or overspray, dirt, bad shim jobs and, of course, loose and shifting neck due to untightened or stripped screws.
Vintage style Strat trem (downward bends only): Search the web or get Dan Erlewine's book on Electric Guitar repair -- the one published by Guitar Player is actually the better one. This will cover cleaning up and dressing the six pivot screws, as well as spring adjustments to increase the downward pressure of the bridge plate against the body. If you have a floating, dual-post fulcrum Strat bridge, this advice doesn't apply.
In any case, I recommend you buy the Dan Erlewine book (check Amazon or your fave online seller) -- it's worth the price and covers a lot of ground.
Good luck.
-=tension & release=-
Wow! Thanks for the long post :).
Lowering my pickups seemed to help quite a lot, as I did have them quite high, seems like a bad case of stratitis then..The Erlewine books look quite good, the one on setting up electrics has been added to my wishlist :D.
Another thing I've thought about doing is putting a completely steel sustain block in the back instead of whatever is in it now, but I'm not sure if I can buy one that fits the reissue bridges or if they only fit the vintage string spacing.
I, like you, have a newish (2004) MIM Standard Strat. I would suggest that you do consider replacing the inertia block on it. The stock block on my MIM strat was a little piece of what appears to be pot metal.
Callaham guitars http://www.callahamguitars.com/ sells an upgrade kit for MIM Standard Strats that costs about $75. I did this upgrade to my Strat and my impression is that the tone and sustain of my guitar improved substantially.
My suspician is that Fender hobbles the MIM's with a poor quality block so that side by side in a store they'll never match up to an American strat but that's probably just paranoid conspiracy thinking on my part. :wink: Could be their trying to keep the cost down, and believe me, I do appreciate that....
I have a Squire Strat. Had the same problem with sustain. The guitar seemed bright and tinney. I really didn't use the whammy that much so I decided to block the trem...it increased the sustain tremendously. but this is a major modification, it can be reversed.
You can ride a Yamaha, or play a Yamaha, it is up to you.
Thanks all for the replies, the callaham mexican upgrade kit sounds interesting, I'll have to see how much it'll all be if shipped to England.
I've just tried setting my trem up so that it's flat against the body, and that made quite a difference too. I never could do it before as the screws were actually too tight and low to let the bridge be flat, it always floated...seems obvious now I think about it :oops:.
