Today Fender makes Strats, Teles, Jazz and Precision Basses in just about any configuration you can imagine, whether it’s identical to one played by your favorite artist or an exact duplicate of a vintage model from the Fifties. This vast selection can be pretty overwhelming, but players looking for instruments that represent the essence of Fender turn to the American Standard series when they want a guitar or bass that combines the timeless tones of the classic versions with modern refinements that offer improved playability and performance.
"The American Standard series is Fender’s center of gravity," says Fender Electric Guitar Marketing Manager Justin Norvell. "Before the market fragmented to 50 types of heavy metal, 80 types of funk and 130 satellite radio stations and before there was a vintage market, people used to play a regular Strat or Tele. When Hendrix set a guitar on fire at Monterey, the next day he just went out and got a new Strat. It wasn’t like he specified a ’57 or a ’65. The American Standard line is a modern interpretation of that. It’s timeless as well as being timely."
Just as Leo Fender constantly upgraded and improved the Stratocaster, Telecaster, Jazz Bass and Precision Bass design every few years, the American Standard series offers new refinements that satisfy the constantly evolving needs of modern players while remaining true to the spirit of the original models. This year the entire American Standard series has undergone several significant changes.
"We overhauled the finish process for the new American Standard instruments," says Fender Bass Products Marketing Manager Jay Piccirillo. "The undercoat is thinner, which allows the bodies to breathe and resonate more. We’ve also eliminated the buildup of finish at the neck pocket so that union between the neck and the body is truer."
"We wanted to keep a smooth, durable satin finish on the necks," adds Norvell. "Over time the tint of our satin finishes kept getting lighter until the necks almost looked white. We kept the satin finish on the back of the neck, but now it’s tinted so it looks warmer and richer. The fingerboard is buffed so it has a nice, shiny luster that looks really beautiful when light hits it."
The bridge design for the American Standard Stratocaster, Telecaster, Jazz Bass and Precision Bass also received several important upgrades. The Strat and Tele models now feature bent-steel Fender-style saddles with completely new tooling. "The bent-steel saddle is a big part of great Strat tone," says Norvell. "It creates that swirl you hear when you play trills. The spacing is narrower because we have a flatter radius and bigger frets. The slot where the string comes through the saddle is longer so you’re not going to break your high E and B strings as easily. The height adjustment screws don’t stick up into your palm any more, and they’re made of softer metal with finer threads. The old saddles have a more compressed sound that works well with noiseless pickups, but the new saddles with the Alnico V pickups give you a wider tonal range."
The steel bridge block on the new American Standard Strat is filled with copper instead of resin. "It’s now 100 percent metal," says Norvell. "The block is smaller, so you get more travel from the tremolo bar but you still have the mass of a full-size bridge block so you get more tone and sustain. On the Tele we went to a brass bridge plate with a Fender logo stamped into it like the tailpiece on a Mustang, Jaguar or Jazzmaster. It’s a marriage of a brass bridge plate with bent-steel saddles. A ’52 Tele had brass saddles on a steel plate, so it’s still that same tonal marriage, just reversed. It has that nice bright, wide Tele sound with plenty of clarity."
The J- and P-basses have a newly designed High Mass Vintage Bridge, which consists of a thick steel plate with a brass backstop and brass barrel saddles. "The High Mass Vintage Bridge has the enhanced sustain and punch that a lot of modern players are looking for," says Piccirillo. "But when you look at the bridge it looks like it belongs on the bass. We needed a certain look and a certain sound with a certain level of performance. We’re very proud of what we’ve come up with."
The basses also include new tuners that Fender designed with Hipshot. "We maintained the look and vibe of Fender bass tuners, but we made then 30 percent lighter without losing any of the strength," says Piccirillo. "That keeps the headstock from being too heavy and results in much better balance."
All American Standard series instruments now come with newly designed lightweight, high-impact, molded plastic SKB cases. Glass-reinforced nylon trigger latches provide exceptional security and durability, while TSA-approved locks make it easy to travel with your instrument under today’s strict security requirements. The cases are designed to lock together with similar cases, allowing you to securely stack as many cases as you like.
Fender’s American Standard series instruments are still made from the highest quality materials Fender can obtain. The bodies are crafted from alder grown in the Pacific Northwest, while the necks are made from Eastern hard rock maple harvested in the Northeastern US and Southeastern Canada. Premium grade Indian rosewood is used for the versions with rosewood fingerboards.
"We’re using the same traditional tone woods that Fender has used for years and years," says Steve Grom, Fender’s Vice President of Quality Assurance. "With the American Standard series it’s important to stay true to Fender tradition and remain historically correct to a lot of the vintage instruments."
In 2000, Fender returned to the use of Alnico V magnets for the American Standard series pickups. "The pickups feature a proprietary design, and they’re made in Fender’s factory in California," says Grom. "We have a whole department of people here that wind pickups all day long. We still use the old enamel-coated wire. The only major difference between these pickups and vintage ones is that we now use an injection molded plastic bobbin as opposed to the old fiber bobbin."
Thanks to Fender’s commitment to the American Standard series, they’ve managed to maintain competitive prices for a high-quality, domestically produced instrument. "We make a huge volume of these guitars, so we get excellent prices on raw materials and components," explains Grom. "We have a very sophisticated factory with amazing automated machines that do a lot of the routing, but a lot of handwork still goes into the production of these instruments as well. All of the final wood sanding, buffing and painting is done by hand one unit at a time."
Like its predecessors, the newly revised American Standard series instruments are certain to please a wide variety of musicians no matter what style of music they play. You’re just as likely to see an American Standard Strat or Tele in the hands of a country, jazz or blues musician as you are to see one played by a punk, metal, alternative or rock guitarist. Players like Tom Morello, Jeff Beck and Ed O’Brien of Radiohead have used American Standard guitars as the foundation for their highly individual playing styles.
"Jeff Beck has created unique music that can only be played on a American Standard Strat," says Grom. "You have to have that instrument in order to recreate the music that he plays. You can’t do that on a Telecaster or Les Paul. You’d have a hard time playing it even on a vintage Strat because the tremolo is not the same. Jeff Beck has created music based on the American Standard Strat just like a composer would create music for the violin or oboe." Fender American Standard guitars and basses are great choices for any players who want to develop their own distinctive voices and personalities as well. "The American Standard Strat, Tele, P-bass and J-bass are the four corners of tone," says Norvell. "These are the instruments to buy when you want to sound like you. You could put four musicians in a room that would have nothing in common other than they all play an American Standard Strat. Every time music has gone through a seismic shift Fender was there. Fender guitars and basses have been at the front from the first days of rock and roll through surf, pop, psychedelic, punk, new wave, grunge, alternative and beyond. But we’re just setting up the tee—it’s up to the players themselves to knock it out of the park and make history with the instruments we build."
"American Standard instruments are the instruments that everybody loves but they’re modernized and refined in subtle ways," adds Piccirillo.
"We didn’t change things for the sake of changing them," says Norvell. "We did research, testing and material comparisons that consumers can’t afford to do. It’s not cheap to make a dozen new bridge block designs for testing. We did all that research for you."
"At the end of the day, it’s all about staying true to the spirit of Leo Fender," says Grom. "We take that very seriously. Every day we walk into the factory and say, ‘Thank you, Leo.’ That’s why we put so much effort into the American Standard series. We wanted to really get things right to satisfy the needs of today’s and tomorrow’s musicians."
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