FENDER HIGHWAY ONE STRATOCASTER REVIEW SERIES

There's little doubt that the influence of the Greasebucket circuit is best experienced with quite a fat overdrive tone - not unlike that of ZZ Top in effect. Time to opt for a Rivera Clubster 45 and set to work.

SoundsДЄ conundrum with reviewing such iconic guitars is exactly what to plug into, let alone what to play. This problem is certainly irritating and hopefully this is an isolated incident. The Strat's bridge is just off-centre sufficiently to stop you from being able to get the vibrato arm in place without using excessive force. Niggles? Well, there are a couple of shoddy points. The guitar features a single-piece neck of a lightly flecked maple and both come with a padded Fender Deluxe gigbag. The cast and sealed tuners are made by the far eastern Ping hardware factory.

The vibrato block has been changed from zinc to more vintage-accurate steel and the string spacing at the bridge is slightly narrower - with the bigger frets and smoother playability, it's clear Fender didn't want us slipping off the edges.Д®lsewhere everything remains within the ballparks that made the 1950s originals of these designs so compelling. The Strat's middle pickup is also reverse-wound with reverse polarity, so positions two and four on the five-way pickup selector should be devoid of hum pickup. The Strat's neck and bridge pickups (there's no tone control on the middle pickup) benefit from their own greased-up tone pots.ДЄny electricians among you will appreciate the information that each Greasebucket tone control wiring includes two ceramic disk capacitors alongside a 4.7k ohm metal film resistor. I actually named it myself after the can of used bacon grease that used to sit on our stove at home when I was a kid.' So now you know! I can tell you that, until recently, Highway Ones were strung with strings made at the Ensenada plant.Replacing the vintage-style single-coils are what Fender describes as Hot Strat single-coils that are all based around an Alnico III magnet foundation, a mid-strength magnet that should provide a slightly enhanced, hotter performance when compared to an Alnico II.ДЄdditionally, the guitar offers Fender's increasingly popular Greasebucket tone circuit that was developed in the Custom Shop as a way of rolling off the high-end without the usual low-end woomph of a standard passive tone control circuit.Дidn't this have something to do with a certain Billy Gibbons? 'We designed with him in mind,' states Fender's Mike Eldred, 'and he was the testing guy. So, the irony is the guitars are sourced often the same in some respects, but the common thread isn't Mexico, it is some country in Asia (and not necessarily Red China). The bond that MIM and MIA guitars often have, is that they use the same MADE IN ASIA jacks, pots, tuning machines, and so forth. I am willing to just call people out, not because I hate them, but because I am real focused on not looking stupid to the guys who really do know at FMIC and elsewhere. If a forum is small enough, if the guys are too reluctant to call out their comrades when they step in it, you get perpetuation of myths.

The Fender employees will tell you no, but it isn't enough. You will find, when it comes to the Internet, that some Forums have misinformation that does not wash out. It is not inconceivable that certain USA origin parts would go oversupply in Mexico and be trucked back to Corona where they were needed at once. USA law prohibits a company from even selling as 'Made in USA' anything that is extensively made elsewhere, and the penalties are not insignificant.ДЄ lot of the wooden parts on these MIM and MIA models are actually CNC'd in SoCal, then certain ones are trucked to Mexico for further finishing and etc. FMIC Corona spent a boatload of money to get in compliance with the California Air Resources Board, and once the Ensenada plant had recovered from the fire they had, there was no reason to be trucking these things back and forth like this.

FENDER HIGHWAY ONE STRATOCASTER REVIEW SERIES

The California series was once done something like this, but things changed afterward.

Fender highway one stratocaster review