Dear Fender, This is Bad. 

Simply loosen the four bolts on the neck-heal, realign the neck until the low e spacing fits, and tighten them again. This is almost normal now with Fender - with every second one you have to realign the neck first.

Oh, weird. The neck looked snug in the pocket so I didn't even think of checking. Thanks, I'll try that!

The official guitar for the song Damnit 😉

@@agufish don't, you'll invalidate the warranty - send the POS back to Fender

@@frankcarter6427 I doubt loosening the neck screws slightly would invalidate you're warranty.

This is the answer, although it should have never left Fender like this...especially at this price point.

My TD strat came like this, and SO DID MY CUSTOM SHOP STRAT! This is par for the course for fenders & bolt on neck guitars and easily remedied. I think they shift during shipping as theres no way that fender sis shipping out that many bad aligned guitars. The neck pockets are all machine routed so there are exactly the same shape so that neck swaps are easy. Its by design. The fact that you have such a successful channel and don't know this is kinda dumb honestly but whatever. Having said that, a new guitar should absolutely come with a straight and aligned neck and not like this, but the fix is just so easily done. 2 out of the 3 fenders I have suffered from this upon arrival. Loosen the bolts about a turn or so, align the strings so they are straight, and tighten back up. My TD strat was pretty far off and now its dead center.

Agreed the neck is probably just on crooked and can be fixed as described above.

@@robertkorn totally agree.

@@tedmen1123 I’m based in the UK and I’ve seen some TERRIBLE set ups on Fender. You are much more likely to get a better set up out of the box from a Gibson due to the PLEK system they use & set neck design. At the same time though any guitar bought without playing it in person is a gamble. I’ve played some 6K custom shop Fenders off the walls in music shops and the set ups have been worse than some £100 guitars I’ve had straight out the box. In my own personal experience it’s usually the ones with the terrible set ups end up being keepers for me when I’ve personally set them up.

I'm more than amazed with how quality seems to have gone down during the years, let alone the fact that expensive guitars don't even come with a hard case anymore. When i started playing 17 years ago you really got what you paid for, and a thousand dollar guitar was already considered top tier in every aspect

Yeah, quality is at an all time low in guitar companies across the board.

Yeah, I don’t buy for a second that Sweetwater checks their guitars before they ship them out. I also bought a Charvel from them and the neck wasn’t even fully finished. Half of it was satin, the other half was raw wood.

@@Returnality wtf? That's getting really out of hand. I actually blame the fully saturated market at this point. There are a lot of great models that came out in the last year's but a lot of them are pointless and just gimmicky. Quality control is just an option nowadays

@@Professional.Bro.777 I hate that this is a thing now. Music Man is probably my favorite overall brand, but now even they've switched to MONO soft cases over a quality hardshell. PRS will straight up ship you a $2800 Silver Sky in a gig bag. It's insane.

Came here to say this. 🤘🏻

Wow, Fender neck pockets must be really loose if it's only the bolts holding the neck straight. Most high end builders, the neck joint is a tight interference fit, the bolts just hold it in.

Yeah they're not super great, kind of put me off Fender really. It's also partially due to their shipping+cases, they don't really do anything to support the neck, so any lateral movement shunting the neck will shift it around in the pocket.

What this guy said.

I didn’t know he was capable of a beard.

@@deadinsidemcgee411 He looked older when he was younger, now he looks younger but is older. He’s the modern day Michael Anthony.

@@TylerJohnstonGuitaraugufishbutton

@@deadinsidemcgee411 He had it around 2018-2019 lol.

W comment

Exactly. I’m guessing it suffered a jolt in shipping.

third that. It's not uncommon.

disagree - you complain and send it back

​@@frankcarter6427would you rather try a fix that might sort it in a couple of minutes, or send it back and maybe be waiting weeks for a new one?

Wrong way. The low E string is the one almost falling off the fretboard. Meaning he needs to move the neck towards the low E.

Read my mind. That alignment looks WAYY out, though so who knows if that’d actually do the trick. Give it a shot, Hunter!

@@michaelnugent9758 it looks to me like the bridge probably IS miss aligned, but you never know. A slightly loose neck pocket can really play havoc with strng alignment. Re aligning and remounting the bridge would be fairly easy and only take an hour or so depending on how comfortable you are with the tools. Sending it back to fender would be a mistake in my opinion. I would fix it myself, but armed with photos, i would petition Fender for some small refund, or even better, try and get them to send you some locking tuners or something like that for your troubles.

That bridge looks way off center. You can see that it's pushing up against the pickguard on the bass side, but there is a huge space on the treble side. The bridge should be centered in that space and there should be a gap between the bridge and the pickguard on both sides. There is no way there is enough play in the neck pocket to fix that.

@@kyuubi287 i agree, however, you have to be careful where you place the origin of the problem. It is more common for the bridge to be properly aligned and the pick guard to be out of alignment if your judging by the space between the pick guard and bridge. Im not saying that your wrong, just that you have to be aware of both scenarios before you come to an informed conclusion. Either way i disagree with sending it back, unless you are a true beginner. The problem is an easy fix either way, and will award you knowaladge and experience if you tackle it yourself. It beats waiting another year, thats for sure.

Sometimes you can physically bend the neck into place and then tighten the screws in to "lock" it in place. It's one of those things that might work, it might not, but it's a good last resort.

You'd only see it on a vintage guitar because nowadays the technology is in place to accurately measure these things. I had a vintage Mustang with the bridge slightly too far back, luckily it does intonate, it's just ever so slightly flat.

the amount needed to move far exceeds the amount of wiggle your gonna get loosening the screws and shifting the neck the millimeter or 2 it needs ......

@@rocketpigrecords3719my slick sl57 has a better neck than a lot of higher end guitars imo.

​@@rocketpigrecords3719not even that was the case sometimes during the 70s, ill fitted pockets and bolted on slanted

Ordered two American Professional Jazzmasters the last few weeks and both went back. Sounded great and nice playability, but they both had their issues I can't accept for being 2k guitars

@@dennisfuzzhead4439 same with tele's for me. i wish i could buy in store and play before i buy but stores have very few guitars that interest me (and those were bad too).

Amen! you are spot on in everything you said here an Yes, it is ironic is mainly in US guitars you fins this issue.

It's not a bad product, per se. Had he bought from a shop, this possibly would have been adjusted at the shop before it hit the floor (depends on the store, really). Buying directly from Fender opens up to issues like this. It's not a Fender or product issue, really, but actually a shipping issue. Fender, back in the 50s and 60s, were aware of this issue of guitar necks needing alignment adjustment after shipping. It's just the reality of a bolt-on guitar, and luckily very easy to remedy.

@@EstevanOsorio I know about the bolt-on adjustment issue. The average player probably doesn't, and may look to return this. But it's not "the reality of a bolt-on guitar", this is Fender specific (or at least I'm not aware of another company who's design are so poor as to allow this problem). Their neck pockets are generally not a very good design imo. They can allow for way too much slop. I've never seen them use threaded inserts to try to get and maintain perfect alignment as opposed to just screwing in wood screws like they've always done. In this age of CNC technology with the ability to get tolerances to within 0.01 mm, the overall slop in this neck joint design is really showing it's age. To top it off, I don't think I've ever seen Fender use a bridge that had "self-alignment". What I mean by that is something like a Hipshot, where there is a wall above the low E saddle and another wall below the high E saddle. I'm saying "wall", but I think there is better terminology, I'm just forgetting. This prevents the saddles from getting too far off alignment, which I have seen happen with Fender saddles. He could work with this guitar or get a guitar tech or luthier to look at it. Maybe get the fret polish up to par since he mentioned that as well. And of course action and intonation (I think on very well built guitars, these should not end up as issues at least not as much as he described it, but the mass produced guitars that sometimes still can cost a pretty penny are having lots of reported issues....I can vouch myself). So yeah there are remedies, but better designs and manufacturing practices should also be mentioned....although I don't expect change though, Leo Fender was the king of mass produced cheap guitars and that still seems like Fender's philosophy.

@@piptyson5512 Good thing there’s plenty of options for you to buy something else then. 👍🏼

@@EstevanOsorio Well I usually build my own nowadays. The old saying goes "want something done right, do it yourself".

​@@EstevanOsorioIt's not just that, though. Maybe this certain case is, but Fender's QC, in general, is not. I just bought a Vintera Jazzmaster (my first and, most likely, last ever purchase of a Fender brand product), and it had an improperly filed nut that caused e string to constantly pop out with regular strumming, and headstock lacquer spills over onto the first fret and about halfway down the 2nd. This is shoddy production and even shoddier quality control... I've never had such issues with any of my other 11 (non-Fender) guitars, and this Jazzmaster costs 2x-10x as much as those other guitars. Unacceptable.

or you scratch it, the neck doesn't align and you've voided the warranty. Putting the neck on straight is their job, not the customer's

@frankcarter6427 why would you void the warranty for slightly loosening those bolts? It's impossible to know. I agree it's their job BUT it takes 5 minutes to fix compared to the hassle of sending it back and waiting, especially when it's out of stock everywhere.

@@mikedamisch If there's that much movement in the neck pocket? No way! Send it back!

@@devinsinderwitcz9134 it takes a tiny amount at the pocket to move quite a bit at the nut. You can do this to almost all bolt ons.

They ain't wrong about it being in spec for Gibson. Gibson QC sucks

I've had 3 MIM guitars.. 2 Charvels and one Fender.. come with wonky truss rods that didn't want to turn. Yet I still think that factory puts out good stuff. I like Vintera and Pro-Mod lines a lot. I always check the truss rod as part of first inspection because Fenders always have a lot more relief than I like anyway. And lowering action helps assess fret leveling and other such things

Mind arrived perfectly

So after watching this I took another look at mine… while not as bad as yours, mine also had some bad alignment, I’ve fixed it with a small shim in the neck pocket on the bass side of the neck, I just used a small piece of folded wet and dry paper and that was just enough to put it right. Something I completely missed in my own review of the guitar.

​@@JasonWharton82easy to overlook, im a real harsh judge of QC, and normally its pretty rare to find this issue,... normally:). hope yours is playing OK now👌

@@dejavoodoo7204 yeah all good now, to be honest it didn’t play bad even with it being out a little, still intonated ok and everything. Anyway easy fix for mine thankfully!

Easiest fix in the world on any bolt-on guitar. Loosen the strings, loosen the neck screws, shift the neck until strings align correctly, tighten everything back up. Done in at most 10 minutes. IIRC old Fender manuals actually told you to do this! (b^_^)b

Ha seriously. My cheap ass squire sonic strat I got on sale with a code direct from fender ($190 to my door after all fees) is absolutely amazing out of the box and needed nothing. I’m gunna mod it out and turn it into a Tom Delonge copy

I tend to agree. Although I’ve got a couple premium Ibanez basses in the last couple years and they’ve been damn near flawless. Definitely could have gotten lucky tho

The cheap material. The cheapest one.