Fender American Deluxe Fat Stratocaster: Sweating To The Oldies

For most of my life, I preferred Telecasters. In fact, most of it was with my old 1971, and I tended to see strats as overpriced and tempermental.

There was a simple reason. The infamous Fender tremelo bar. You tune the guitar, and when it's done, you have to retune again. Then the occasional buzz that just comes out of nowhere. Most often it's due to the strings losing tension from wear and tremelo dive bombing, and pickups adjusted too high (and the magnets pulling the strings down).

About five years ago, I began to play strats more. I started with a Plus, and have moved on to a 2005 Deluxe with a Floyd Rose (that will die a quick death soon), jumbo instead of medium jumbo frets, and three humbuckers instead of the HSS setup.

I use a Duncan Lil '59 in front, Cool Rail in the middle, and a Alnico 2 Pro at the bridge. Short of metal, I can do anything, and it looks super cool and impressive. I can split all three coils, and the out of phase sound with the humbuckers is worth the whole cost of the mods.

Now with a Floyd Rose, or most strats for that matter, action isn't really a problem. If you want real tone, and you don't want buzz to appear at the wrong time, you're going to keep your strings up a bit anyway.

If you're into speed, you should be playing a Gibson or PRS anyway.

The Fender Deluxe, and it's earlier cousin the Plus were the best production models of their time, and were sold that way. Perhaps the two weren't worth more than 1200.00, but there's no mistake, the Deluxe was a premium Fender.

It's way underpriced in the used market, and as such, one of the bargains that collectors haven't begun to notice yet. I've seen Plus's as low as 600.00.

There's decades of HSS strats, so I have to be specific about mine. Mine is a 2005, it had the vintage noiseless cobalt type designed by Bill Lawrence, and the sound was impressively hot in the 60s mode.

The one quality I like about strats is that the guitars truly are like blank canvases. You can trick up a Les Paul to sound like a better Les Paul, but you can trick up a strat to give you a world of other sounds.

I've pulled the nuts off of the locking nut, and have found that a note or cord will sustain until I stop it. Not as elegant as a steel ball nut, but it works. Besides, I prefer the locking pegs. The jumbo frets don't work any better than the mediums, but in having those put in, the leveling was better.

My 2005 is the translucent Amber, which I hated at first as it seemed too much like the Highway 1 that had the same finish. However, as my front pickups and pickguard are white, the amber had grown on me, and looks distinctive.
The body is high grade alder, and the rosewood neck is a good match for the finish. All in all, a beautiful guitar.

In a sense, reviewing an out of production guitar is telling you what you missed. It's also telling you what it was, and what it is for the price today. Whatever you thought about the deluxe when it was new and cost close to 1500.00 changes when you see one for 800.00, and when you see all the features that were packed into it.

Add a few more touches like I did with the Duncans, and the Fat turns to muscle.