DAVE NORTH

Written by D W North 2008

Fender 1983 Standard Telecaster.

I love the sound of a Telecaster but have always found the design of the hardware to be non-player friendly, as I have found them to be uncomfortable to play because of the rims on the bridge plate. The 1983 standard addressed this problem to a degree by removing the top and bottom rims to the bridge plate.

The only thing that I didn't like about this guitar was the guitar neck. In the early eighties Fender changed the head nut spec on their guitars to a larger head nut width. This gave the guitar a much wider and flatter neck, which for me took away the natural feel of the Telecaster.

Fender 1962 Re-Issue Telecaster.

This guitar was one of those guitars that if you bought you would have it for a long time. It started off with a white scratchplate. Changing the scratchplate to a black one was more of a whim on my part, cos' it looked just as good with the original white one. It played like a dream, and did everything you would expect from a vintage Fender guitar. I sold it in the end to Chas from Chas and Dave, through my friends music shop, Machinehead Music.

The only thing that I didn't like about this guitar was the vintage bridge plate. The rims on the Telecaster bridge were there to hold on the bridge cover. I don't think I know of anyone who has ever used a Telecaster with the bridge cover on it. ( In fact in the old days they were nicknamed as ash trays cos' thats what most people used them for ) So why Fender didn't change the design earlier I really don't know! I'm sure this is one of the reasons that Bill Carlson described the Telecaster as 'a pretty girl in bad clothing'.

Fender 1972 Stratocaster.

Made at a time when Fender were starting to go through financial problems, and making cutbacks on the construction of their guitars. This Strat had a fixed bridge rather than the floating tremelo. But it was a really great guitar. and was one of the best guitars I have ever had. Having had a lot of guitars over the years and sold them on, there are always gonna be one or two you wish you'd kept hold of, and this is definitely one of those guitars.

Fender 1979 25th Anniversary Stratocaster.

This guitar looked really amazing when I first bought it back in 1982. But that is about the only good thing I can say about it, and it's good looks didn't last long.

In the late seventies Fender were making some really poor guitars, and started getting a bit of a bad reputation. They didn't do themselves any favours with their 25th anniversary model of the Strat. The first 500 made were white with a black scratchplate, but due to the white finish suffering from severe cracking they changed it to the silver finish. But, this was no better as due to a chemical reaction in the paint the silver finish soon tarnished to a grotty looking battle ship grey colour.

The guitar was also much heavier than a normal Strat, and had a much smaller headnut width. The headnut width made the neck have a cramped up bulbous feel to it, and the heavyness made it far from fun to play.

I ended up selling my one cos' the special design single coil pickups that were used on it ended up so sensitive that it started to become microphonic, and gave off frequency harmonics even on clean sounds at high volume. I even tried having the pickups re-dipped but it made no difference.

Fender 1983 Elite mk2 Stratocaster.

A Strat with a modern look. New hardware, new electronics and everything that a Stratocaster shouldn't be. This one had a newly designed fixed bridge. Purely cos' the newly designed Free Flite trem system had very little stability, if any at all.

 The headnut width was much larger (typical to Fenders of the early eighties ) which gave the neck a very flat feeless action. and the active circuit made the Lace Sensor pickups way over powered.

 The 3 push button selector switching, although giving you the option of two sounds not reachable on other strats ( you could have all 3 pickups on at the same time, or the bridge and neck pickups on together, which gave a more gibson type sound) was very cumbersome.

To change the pickup selector you had to push two buttons. one to turn on the pickup you were changing to and one to turn the other one off. The problem with this is if you mistimed pushing the buttons, it was possible that you could turn the guitar off completely.

This guitar sums up everything that CBS did for fender guitars in their later years as owners of the company, which was very little if anything at all. 

The volume, TBX and MDX knobs which were plastic with a rubber grip on them, although very effective had a tackyness about them. Everything on this guitar had either the Fender logo or the Fender F sign on it which was almost like they were trying to convince you that it was really a Fender guitar you were playing. Possibly cos' it didn't sound or feel like one.

Fender 1957 Re-issue Vintage Stratocaster.

This guitar is everything that a vintage Fender strat should be. Makes playing it such a joy. Although my main guitar is a Paul Reed Smith Standard 22 these days, I always find myself going back to my strat. I can fully understand from having this guitar why people always want a vintage style Strat.

 although I have my doubts about the commemorative edition which is available today.

But if I was to die with this Fender Strat in my hands, I know I would be going with a smile on my face.

Fender Squier Japan 1985 Katana.

1985 was the year that the Fender Squier company started to fall down on the quality of their guitars. Although this guitar was of a much higher standard than the Squier guitars of today, it still had a really cheap feel about it. The Katana was one of 3 guitars brought out by Fender to try to step away from the well known traditional styles and shapes that they had always made before. All 3 guitars were short lived and flopped on the sales market.

There was also a more advanced Fender Japan version of the Katana, which suffered the same fate.

This one was all white until I got hold of it and tried to give it a face lift. I also added a double locking trem, and changed the machines to Grovers.

I am glad that since then Fender hasn't tried to design any other guitars along this line.

Fender F270SCE.

The Fender F270 was the top, and the flag ship of the Fender SCE acoustic guitar range, and it had all the trimmings of a top of the range axe. Top quality body and neck materials, Machines and pearl decore. Plus  really good quality hard case. Which really makes it such a shame that it was such a dog to play.

To say the action on it was hard work would be the biggest under statement ever! Why was it so much like hard work? I really dont know! The action wasn't high in any way. In fact I had the action on my one lowered then lifted again because it made no difference. But even so, I must class it as a really good guitar.

It just seemed to be one of those guitars that really got the best out of me by pushing me to work harder. plus its full bodied acoustic tones were like nothing I had ever heard before, nor have I heard since.

A type of acoustic guitar that because of the poor playability but great sound, was just crying out for a set of bronze 12 gauge strings to be fitted so you could just bash the crap out of it.

The only downer sound wise was the guitars pre-amp. It just didn't allow the guitars natural sounds to shine through when plugged in, so I used to always mic it up, which isn't always practical.