Fender Stratocaster Select HSS Electric Guitar Review

This review was submitted by Guitar Jar contributor: Sandy

My name is Sandy and I have always played a Fender. About 20 years ago I bought myself one in a used music store in Vancouver; a 1966 white Strat with a rosewood board.

…This one guitar made the connection…

Fender Stratocaster Select HSS Electric Guitar I toured and recorded all over the world with that old girl. A long story short… a couple of years ago I was robbed. Someone kicked in my front door and took my fridge, snow blower, washer and dryer, everything I owned, and yes they got my old Stratocaster.

Without using offensive language I will tell you that it was the equivalent of having my… ahem… manly bits cut off. I went into a serious depression and have searched high and low for that guitar.

Anyways, a couple of years later I started wanting to play again so I started to search for a new guitar.

I played every Strat for sale in Montreal but I could find and nothing hit that special chord with me. Excuse the obvious pun there… really… sorry about that.

So I tried to fall in love with Gibson’s; Les Pauls weren’t doing it.

I kind of decided on a really beautiful hollow body but when I returned to the store it had been sold.

So off to PRS land I went. I found something I could settle with but didn’t pull the pin.

The Suhr are nice too, but again did not get the magic feeling.

I finally went into a little music store outside of Montreal and it was then I first laid eyes of the Fender Select series of guitar.

There are two models of the Strat; one with SSS pickup configuration and one with the HSS pickups. The SSS came with a maple neck but I am a rosewood guy so that was that.

I figured if I did not like the humbucker I would switch it out later.

Features:

This guitar is a bit strange for a Strat in that it has a maple veneer on an alder body. I like alder. It just chimed before I even plugged it in.

I do not know the exact specs off by heart but here is the jist of things:

The neck has a double truss and is made out of bird’s eye maple with a rosewood board. It also has Fender locking tuners and with the bar floating… she actually stays in tune. Really! Very strange. My old one stayed in tune too but I had the springs cranked down and broke the bar years before.

So I have changed out the 9’s for light top heavy bottom 10’s and reset the springs and intonation.

I like my strings to be approaching ropes. You have to work a bit harder to hit those notes and cuts down on the guitar Kung Fu I get into with lighter strings.

The neck is also a compound radius which makes things a bit more natural to play.

The fret job was perfect; all notes ring true and not a sharp edge to be found.

The pickups are different too. Maybe not a hot, but man are they smooth. I had some ideas for rewiring but am losing interest in that for now at least.

Ease of use:

When I started playing this guitar I finally once again realized why I play a Strat. I pretty much hadn’t touched a guitar since I was robbed so my hands were not in shape at all. And I was all over that guitar’s neck… when I put it down… I was happy again.

And I knew I was a Strat man. Very easy to play.