A look Inside the New Fender Players Stratocaster Deep Dive Review 

Strap locks along with making the humbucker versions slightly higher output and it’s the perfect guitar.

Is it wrong I like the sound of the standard series more? Like way more.

It's not wrong. However, the Player series sounds a lot more like a classic strat is supposed to sound, so maybe you just don't like strats that much lol

gdawgs101 I tried the Player Series at Guitar Center this weekend and was not impressed. The one I tried looked awesome, but had a cheap feel. Not sure if it was because of the maple fingerboard vs. the rosewood type, but I played a few notes and hung it right back on the wall. Fretwork and feel were the issue.

Bryan Sexauer have you played a previous model MIM to compare?

Victor Osorio man what is the difference between mapple neck and rosewood,and is that subjective ? Just curious

Shahid K Some say it affects the tone others refuse to believe it. I think that rosewoods are a little fuller sounding then a maple board but that’s just me.

Carson Kilo 🙌

It does

Shahid K haha this is late but i didn’t even care about the slight change in sound, i just liked the way maple fretboards looked and felt better

A based on this review, you won’t feel like you’re missing out on the $1,000 Strats.

Good, go for it

I went from a Fender Bullet to the MIM Player HSS Strat in Tobacco Sunburst with Rosewood neck and just have to say the quality and look of guitar is awesome. I am not an expert by any means but these guitars are awesome. You can't go wrong on the price either.

Ive got a player tele. It feels great and sounds great completely stock. It also wont hurt if you want to mod it and i comes with the fender name and mexican quality.

This is exactly what I’m looking to do. I love my les paul but I would like to play something completely different to see how my playing changes. 👍🏼

Same. It's awesome. My frets needed some work (smoothed the edges which weren't sharp but could be felt), but otherwise it was basically perfect. The wood of the neck in particular felt spectacular. Too many guitars I tried in the price range had super-shiny necks that weren't nice to move my hands around on. The satin-ish finish on the Player was absolutely perfect.

Rudy Ayoub lol

Bruh

Buy yourself a Squier classic vibe and get all of this without being over charged by Fenders continuous upgrades.

to me too

yes I agree, and thx Phil!

Agreed. The standard sounded muffled by comparison.

I preferred the sound of the other guitar, frankly. Had more oomph! More substance. The player model sounded a little thin and brittle to me. Of course, taste is utterly subjective.

I like the Player clean but damn! The Standard sure did sound mean in the dirty mode through that runt! And I had ceramics in my old Mexi strat, but they sounded like an icepick through the eyeball by comparison.Dimarzio Areas for me...

Vrrrrrooom... Love does rrrrolled Rrrr's!

If you want to do the mod yourself and don't like soldering, check out an Obsidianwire solderless harness assembly. They have a blender mod option, and if you want to try out multiple pickups, easy peasy lol.

I did the same lol. Black body with black pickguard and Lace Sensors lol

I got the same one Inca silver ltd. I like it. Fret edges are a little rough but I can fix that. There is some dust underneath the finish I noticed why I was surprised passed qc but I can live with that. Frets are nice and I got the action low. Also I had a set of old fender locking tuners so put them on. It’s perfect now. No gig bag is just mean.

The lack of rounded frets was my only complaint also :)

even those new pickups dont sound as good as my SSL1 in my mexi strat.Nothing sounds as good as thise pickups,real vintage sound.

My thoughts exactly!

Prasanth Selvadurai I just bought some Squier cv 60s strat pickups aka tonerider classic blues for 30 euros. I put them on a Japanese Squier e series strat. Replaced the stock ceramics now it sounds soo good ☺ Best 30 euro I ever spent

those guitars are expenisve but man are they beautiful and unique certainly more than your run of the mill start. congrats.

I played them side by side and preferred the MIM standard. The only thing I wish the standard had is a 22nd fret.

@@surfdigby alnico pickups and 2-point bridge sold it to me (alternative was MIA with hot Texas Specials that are too harsh imo). It really depends on what you want from your guitar.

Thorneyed the two point trem made it very tempting to go with the Player, but I preferred the shape of the old neck.

@@surfdigby I have big hands so neck profile doesn't really matter for me (unless it is baseball bat used in old soviet guitars). Anyway, I really like Fender's range now and that I got exactly what I wanted for good price.

Some people were rushing to get the last Standards available. So you can sell it very well if in very good or excellent condition.

Forgot to tell what woods the bodies are made of.

Especially an iconic guitar like a Strat - there gotta many used ones at a pawn shop near you!

@Luke yeah I don't think that 700 dollars merits a case,but on the other side of that there are 1500 plus dollar guitars that still only come with a gig bag.I say 1200 or more should come with a proper case.

I hate it.

I go both ways on the neck. I have one of each right now. The Pao Ferro was used on the Stu Ham Urge bass and I really only saw it used in high end or custom instruments. So its not like its crap wood.

Gringo Green I agree is not crap wood, but it looks like a cheap Chinese knock off. They just don't look good to me for whatever reason.

Smelly Web I definitely like the darker rosewood better, maybe on sweetwater you could compare the ones in stock and get a darker slab of the pau that looks like rosewood. If not I’m sure there will still be new standards for the next year and used ones forever.

Smelly Web It's like a diluted rosewood. I would personally like to see fingerboards with wild looking grains in it. Where you are coming from is what the past 15 years have been, cool but slightly off veneers in cheap instruments. I feel ya!

@@brooklynboy1000 Try flying with a gig bag, or throwing it in the back of a van with drums and amps.

The difference is just around 85miles.

lapk78 the tuning keys are the same; @3:13

@@mantinizz, yeah, both are pretty much the same spec, both made by mexicans, just on different sides of the wall.

Less hardware (no vintage bridge with big sustain block). No rosewood (pao ferro is cheaper). Wow, they added a wire to allow tone for the bridge (LMAO). No gig bag (That's $70 alone). Less paint on the guitar (no paint in cavities). The neck on the American Standard is like butter. Way better than this neck. A $50 price increase on the guitar. So what is it that's so great about this guitar that they would raise the price of it? Those Alnico V's? Spare me. Not a damn thing. The Mexican Standard pickups in this video sounded way fuller and warmer than the thin sounding Alico V's the Player strat had. Keep your Mexican Standard, save your money and buy an American Standard if you want to upgrade and bypass all of the gimmicky guitars (Player, Hendrix Strats, Deluxes, Reissues, Classics..etc)

@@harleyrider9166 there's gear snobs and then there's you. lol. What do you expect Fender to do? Keep selling Rosewood that continues to rise in cost and logistically gets more and more expensive? Or move to something (that has been used countless times in other guitars) that creates a cost effective product and isn't a logistics nightmare? You can't eat your cake and have it too. This is reality.

it's Portuguese right? what does pau ferro mean?

@@billygoat126 It means "Iron Wood"

@@billygoat126 exactly, iron wood!

layladystay yeah I disagree alot and zi mean alot of people wanted to be able to mess with the tone of the bridge pickups literally the most wnated thi ng on standard strats so im happy they did it and the tone is so much better on the bridge noe

My first mod on any strat is to put a Duncan strat sized humbucker in the bridge, went with the new Billy Gibbons model on my MIM Standard and an Obsidianwire harness which has a bridge dedicated tone and auto split in position 2.

wouldent be the first time fender marketing litrature is off. they might be reffering to body contour, the old MIM standards are a bit shallower in contour compaired to more vintage spec ones like the Japanese ST62 and 57 models which have very heavy countouring. mabey they upped it more like the japanese ones

Ummm, $1700 and up I think we should get a lot more.

@@fredsavina4965 Player strats are around $650 i think. Bought mine for £580

The AM Standard had rolled edges on the neck and micro tilt adjustment - I don't think the Player series does - and it certainly makes a difference. But if you want a real Fender / Strat you need to start at the AVRI - anything below that is just a guitar marketed toward people that don't know any better. I'd be happy to see the AVRI as the entry point to Fender and anything below that including these to be given the Squier badge. Nothing wrong with these MIM guitars either - just not a fan of the dodgy Fender marketing telling people it's a real Fender with the heritage / pedigree of the classic Pre CBS guitars - when it's got little if anything to do with the guitars by Leo and George which made the companies place in music folklore.

@Danilo Caretta And usually the same Mexican techs from the Corona factory driving back home and making them in Mexico. Having said that, I haven't picked up a Strat in quite a while that felt worth a damn. I ordered one off line, big mistake, a few years ago and the frets were rough, the pick guard was crooked, and it won't stay in tune. Looking at Warmouth now.

@ tdunster2011 I'm not following your argument- do Fender not get to decide what they call a Fender? And if Fender are no longer qualified to decide what to call a Fender and what is/ isn't a 'real' Fender, are they qualified to put the Fender badge on even the AVRI? If I'm not qualified to tell you you're not ill, I'm probably not qualified to tell you you are ill either. In the same way, if Fender are getting it wrong with regards to 'real' Fenders then they should have their right to call anything a Fender revoked. This argument is kind of like saying Ford can't call a modern Mustang a Mustang because the guys who designed and worked on the original Mustang didn't make it. Any car that isn't all original is no longer a Mustang. When you're saying 'dodgy Fender marketing', you're kind of missing the fact that that's what a brand is. Marketing. There's not some magical point in time when products were pure and perfect which has been diluted by market influences, those times you hark back to are just as subject to marketing concerns, that's what Fender always was- a mass marketing machine. Bolt necks saved money, that's why they did it. The features of these guitars 'which made the companies place in music folklore' are features dictated by the market every bit as much as the PF fretboards are today. This is why Gibson are dying, imo- kids in bands choose Fender because they get 'bang for their buck', because Fender is simply a more effective marketing machine.

No, but you can get the American special for pretty cheap anyway

Marshticks - It's not specific to just guitars. Many premium brands from all around the world have been bought up by people with little to links to what made the brands famous in the first place. Anyone calling a Veyron a Bugatti for example is kidding themselves - it's a VW. Ford Mustangs is a good example as well. The original 60's Gt-350 was named as such due to its horsepower. Ford in recent times made a Gt-350 which looks nothing like the original, and doesn't even have 350hp for fucks sake ? If that's not simply bullshit marketing and badge whoring I don't know what is. Where it irks me with Fender is that people crap on and on about owning a genuine Fender when what they have a is a guitar made by a company that bought the Fender name from CBS, who bought the company from Leo himself. AVRI and some custom shop versions are at least following the original plan - but again they are no more Fender than any of the many very good strat and tele's made by other companies. Then you have the modern designs, which for the most part are piss poor versions of the guitars Leo and his team crafted up until CBS took over circa 1965 / 1964. And While we are here lets talk Fender amps. The only thing they have in common with the original designs is the badge and naming. Gone are the point to point wiring, high quality transformers, dove-tailed real wood constructed cabinets and so on - not too mention the cheap caps, and resistors, or chinese and rusky valves used now which are no match for those used in the 50's and 60's. As a result plate voltages are now either lower or circuits have been redesigned to cope with modern tubes being less rigorous. Compare a 1964/5 Princeton Reverb with the reissues Fender are pawning off to customers todays and again you'd need to be drawing a very long bow to say the two amps were one in the same. Other companies out there build much better replicas of the Princeton Reverb, Super Reverb, 59 Bassman, ... and a host of other Fender amps. To buy one of these reissues from"Fender" makes no sense at all. Admittedly we get the occasional Custom Shop reissue Fender amps done right - but it's still only a replica which others can make just as well [often better] for the same price or less.

Mark Viereck The old argument that I have heard was "what do you care if your guitar was assembled in Mexico by Mexicans or assembled in California by Mexicans?" Not making that up. That said American models usually had better woods and parts. More attention to detail in the setup. The Mexican guitars always scream to be hotrodded! I've owned American, Mexican and Squire and they all are pretty great. Just go with the guitar that you find is sexy. I do miss my MIM Jazz Bass...

There's absolutely nothing wrong with MIM strats. What you're paying for in an American strat is better quality control, better woods, and a better initial set up (which you'll end up having to redo anyway). Outside of that you're paying for the "'Murica!" value of the guitar, completely just branding and the illusion of supporting American workers. My MIM P/J bass feels better and sounds better than my MIA Jazz standard.

drrocket 8775, I heard that, too.

Yeah also read about that.. what’s the story, Phil?

I think that's in reference to the jazzmaster and jaguar. Those both got 7.5 in vintage, but they're 9.5 now.

They did say body radii, but it's probably subtle.

drrocket 8775 it's the neck that has been changed somewhat supposedly I believe

McRCN I just ordered the sss one is Heritage Cherry yesterday! I cant wait for mine to get here either!!

What are you guys' impressions so far? I'm thinking about the HSH or HSS but we don't have anywhere within an hour drive or more that has one to play. Maybe more like a 2-3 hour trip.

I bought the HSH version. I like the guitar, but don't seem to love it. Not crazy about the shape of the neck, it is a tad chunkier than I expected. I could be a bit bias though, because I also have a '62 Strat Reissue with a thinner neck and a smaller radius. Maybe I just like that guitar better or I should have went with the HSS model. Remember if you are ordering online, just make sure you understand the return policy in case you decide you want to send it back.

Jorge Gonzalez who did you order from?

Sweetwater - Kurt Cripe is the sale rep I use.

Steven Ohata b I bought one in 2000 for 300 plus tax and it came with a case.

Robert H 2000 was almost 20 years, in 2000 you couldn't buy things for the same price as 1982. These current guitars are way better guitars than the standard you could buy in 2000.

Seriously. Costs for materials, labor, shipping, everything goes up. I remember paying less than 2 dollars a gallon of gas 20 years ago, now it's more than doubled in price. Food, energy, EVERYTHING goes up in price. I had no qualms about shelling out 650 for one of these after watching this video.

Your'e so right. Some people expect to get things these days for a song..lol

I remember paying a penny for a Mars bar and still having change for a bag of coal and enough pickled walnuts to see the kids through the winter!

Melissa Bates haha i totally agree names can get ridiculous

Marketing would label it as high, higher and highest. Nobody want's to buy a "low" guitar :-)

yeah id say in a perfect world have it catagorized by vintage spec, modern spec. then by cost. I would also like fender USA still made vintage spec guitars because since earlier this year only the mexican factory and the Japanese factorys make vintage spec models (Original switching, 7.25 radius, 1.5 neck width

Melissa, from 5 November you can add Ultra to your list of names!

Ever since the American professional came out you can find NOS and used American standards for like 700-1000 bucks. still some people like new guitars and fender seems to be on the ball with haveing guitars in every price range