Fender Special Edition Noir Stratocaster and Telecaster
I'm not sure how I feel about these...
... but at least Fender is doing something different.
There is the Fender Special Edition Stratocaster HSS Noir Satin. There is also a Telecaster version.
As far as I can tell, both these guitars are just appearance packages. The Strat is a Mexico-made Fender Standard Stratocaster and the Telecaster is a Mexico-made Fender Standard Telecaster.
The body finishes on these guitars appears to be satin black, which results in a dulled gloss and not a high gloss. And I believe the satin urethane finish is on both the body and headstock.
As far as what the pick guard is made of, I've no idea. It has a brushed texture look to it with red outline. Whether it has actual texture or is just a print, that I don't know.
The logo treatment on the headstock appears to be in red text, with the Fender transition logo in either a silver or gold outline (probably silver).
The only weirdness I find here is that the Strat has a half-blackout treatment. The output jack is black but the bridge and saddles are not. As for the Tele, the hardware was kept all in chrome there.
Cool? Not cool? You can be the judge of that.
As for price, each is priced $50 higher than the regular version, which for this appearance package is fair since you never see the red pick guard outlines nor red Fender logo/model text on the headstock.
Casio A168WEC inbound
I need another watch like I need another hole in the head, but this one caught my eye.
Before I get into that, as of late I've been wearing nothing but Casio watches, because I am a Casio guy. The brand just speaks to me. I do own other watches from different brands, and while true I could in fact get more functionality out of a Timex Ironman for real cheap, I just keep going back to Casio.
On a daily basis I wear either the G-SHOCK DW9052 or the Databank CA53W. But then I had the urge to grab my A158WEA and put that on, so I did and wore it for a short spell. While wearing it, I thought, "This thing would be so much nicer if it had the EL nightlight on it like my DW9052 does..."
EL means electroluminescent, which is Casio's version of Timex's Indiglo. While the A158 that stems from the F-91W keeps its traditional module (both have exact same module 593), the old-school nightlight LED bulb is just terrible. Very weak and almost useless.
The solution to the weak nightlight is to get a Casio with the far superior EL. If you want something very similar to the F-91W with EL, that's the F105W. And when you want something with a steel bracelet, there's the A168.
I, however, don't like the styling of the A168 which is why I've never bought one...
...until now.
There is a special edition of the A168, the A168WEC. Instead of the black border dial with big blue stripe at top and multicolored text around the dial or the regular A168, this one has a monochromatic treatment to it with gray camouflage border. This is a style I like a lot better over the stock A168.
Best styling for this style of watch? No. That honor belongs to a special edition of the A158, the A158WEA-1EF.
I'm half tempted to get that one at some point just for its look because it has a total blackout of the dial while keeping the same gray LCD. The only colors present for text are white and gray, which is just right. This has the look and style of a ritzy Seiko digital from the early '80s and that's just cool. This is as elegant as digital gets. Unfortunately it does not have an EL nightlight. Just the old LED bulb. But the styling is spot-on good.
Anyway, back to the A168WEC.
I don't have it yet because it's still in the mail en route. But from what I've seen in photos, I think the styling will agree with me.
The gray camouflage version is the one I liked best. There are actually 4 versions. There's the gray camo A168WEC-1EF, the A168WEC-3EF which is stainless steel and green camo, the A168WEGC-3E which to my eye is an absolutely disgusting and stupid looking gold + green camo, and the A168WEGC-5EF which is a slightly better but still ugly gold + brown/light-brown camo.
Yes, it is crazy what Casio rolls out when you look around. And I'm certain there will be those who will absolutely love even the disgusting gold camo versions and immediately buy them.
Another reason I don't like the stock A168 is because it's too easy to acquire and too common. For something like the A168WEC, you have to be watching Casio's catalog to know it even exists. This is similar to how G-SHOCK enthusiasts are constantly watching Casio's catalog for new releases of limited run styles.
I'm not saying the A168WEC's style is for everyone, because it's not. I just think it looks better than the stock A168. It has F-91W simplicity in a stainless steel bracelet version with the EL nightlight, and it's a model that's definitely not available in every department store.
Fender American Jazzmaster Special makes a return
A Jazzmaster sneaks its way back into the lineup as a limited Fender run.
A guitar that I honestly thought was gone, the Fender American Jazzmaster Special, has returned for a short spell. This had a run in the Fender lineup and then disappeared...
...but now it's back as a limited run with a walnut finish.
This guitar is exactly what it looks like, a simplified hardtail Jazzmaster. No vibrato system present here. Just a stop piece, a Fender Adjust-O-Matic bridge, no rhythm circuit, a pair of Fender American Vintage '65 Jazzmaster pickups, one volume, one tone, one 3-way toggle.
Also atypical is the fact this Jazzmaster has sealed tuners and two "roller" string guides instead of just one.
The neck is the familiar Fender Modern C shape with a 9.5" fretboard radius and jumbo frets.
Is this a good Jazzmaster?
This Fender is arguably the most friendly Jazzmaster you could buy. The guitar was intentionally built to be a very easy player.
You might be wondering why you should even bother with this when the Squier Deluxe Jazzmaster ST is a very similar guitar and you get the rhythm circuit, all for a whopping $900 less.
This is one of those instances where I think the Fender is the better buy. The AV '65 pickups are amazing (truly, they are), and for a hardtail guitar, the sealed tuners do a better job for keeping the guitar in tune compared to slotted.
In other words, the Fender in this instance will have better overall stability. For a hardtail Jazzmaster, it definitely is the best one to get. It has the proper Jazzmaster tone, excellent stability and is a guitar that can definitely take a beating and be played like it should be.
Ernie Ball vs. D'Addario guitar strings
This ended up with an interesting conclusion.
I'm the type of guitar player that will periodically revisit a brand of string - even if I hated it before - just to see if it stills feels and/or sounds as good or bad as it was the last time I used them.
Why do I do this? Because as far as I'm aware, no make of guitar string keeps the exact same formula for the life of the brand. The machines that make the strings wear out and get replaced, the sourced steel changes depending on supply, the winding process on wound strings changes with advances in technology, sometimes coating is added to give guitar strings longer shelf life, and so on. Even something as insignificant as the weight of the ball end changing by a tiny amount matters.
Most importantly, I'm changing as a guitar player as I get older. I switched from the Stratocaster to the Jazzmaster and changed from 9-42 size to 8-38 (although that may change again later).
The current string I use is D'Addario EXL130.
When I first started playing guitar in my teens, I started off using D'Addario strings because every guitar store had them. But then after bouncing around a few brands, I switched to Dean Markley NickelSteel LT and stuck with that for a long time. Back when I was playing a Strat, Dean Markley handled my playing style very easily.
I stopped using D'Addario because back then (and this is the '90s I'm talking about here) they would gum up real quick. The plain strings seemed to turn black almost instantly and the wound strings would dent up quickly. The Dean Markley strings didn't do that.
In the 2010s I switched over to Dunlop DEN0942. Worked very nicely on the Strat and had very quick break-in time. But when I switched to the Jazzmaster, they really didn't work that well. And when I switched to 8-38, I found that Dunlop just doesn't make a good 8-38 set and it was garbage...
...so after many years, I switched back to D'Addario. They make a very good 8-38 set.
Now I'll talk about Ernie Ball and why I gave those a go.
There are some people who swear by Ernie Ball strings. I don't.
Back in my Strat playing days, in my teens I would snap Ernie Ball strings very easily. Almost too easily. I would pop high-E and B strings sometimes right after installing a set.
Every few years I would try a set of Ernie Ball strings, and every time I did I got the same result. Snapped strings in a very short period of time.
Fast-forward to present.
I like the D'Addario EXL130, but they have an annoying problem. A fresh set takes a while to set in. Usually a few days. They never feel right on the first day. The strings have to be installed, tuned to pitch and settle in before they start acting correct. Once they do, they're wonderful and last a good long while. But before that point, they're awful.
Ernie Ball does make an 8-38 set, the 2225. I figured I'd try those since I've never played an Ernie Ball 8-38 set. And since I don't bend notes on the Jazzmaster like I did on the Strat, maybe I'd actually like them.
Here's what happened.
For break-in and feel, the 2225 set is actually really, really good...
...but they sound so bad that it makes the Jazzmaster almost unplayable.
For anyone who reads this that isn't in the know, I play a Squier Vintage Modified Jazzmaster, which by nature is a super-bright guitar. Big single-coil pickups mated to a ridiculously bright 1 meg volume pot on the lead circuit. This thing is so bright that it makes the treble response of a Stratocaster or Telecaster sound tame in comparison. All proper Jazzmasters are like that.
What happened with the 2225 set on the Jazzmaster is that it sounded like I had installed ProSteels on it.
If you're not familiar with ProSteels, it is arguably the brightest possible electric guitar string you can buy because the steel composition is highly magnetic. And this is exactly what you don't want on a Jazzmaster (or a Jaguar for that matter).
When you have strings with too much treble response on the Jazz or the Jag, what's best described as a screeching sound happens. The treble response is too overblown and makes the guitar sound more or less unusable.
An overly bright string will compensate for a muddy-sounding humbucker. But I noted a moment ago, the Jazzmaster is already super-bright and doesn't need any more help in that department. The Ernie Ball 2225 added in way too much treble, so I had to ditch them and go back to the D'Addario EXL130.
That 2225 set was so screechy that I actually thought something was wrong with my guitar. After I put the EXL130 set on, I realized this wasn't he case, but wow, what a bright string the 2225 set is.
If you play super-extra-ultra-whatever-light 8 gauge like I do and want a really, really bright string to get more note definition from a muddy humbucker, then sure, the 2225 is exactly what you want. But for Strats, Teles, Jags, Jazzes and pretty much anything with a single-coil, no way. You're better off with D'Addario EXL130, Fender 250XS, Fender Super Bullets 3150SL, DR Strings Tite-Fit, GHS Nickel Rockers or any other number of 8-38 sets out there.
And for other set sizes like 9-42, 10-46 or greater, the same applies. The Ernie Ball would work well to liven up a humbucker, but the single-coil guitars need something without as much screech on the treble side of things to sound best.
How to figure out which side to install a pickup from out of a set
There are two ways to do this. One way doesn't work all the time and the other one does.
For a while now (possibly years at this point) I've had a pair of Fender Jazzmaster JM66 Japan model pickups in my possession, and they will probably be going into the 2017 Squier Vintage Modified Jazzmaster I recently acquired. These are pickups I received for free from a friend.
What I didn't know - and neither did the person who gave these to me - is what position each pickup was supposed to be mounted in. The pickups have absolutely no markings on them whatsoever indicating where in the body they should be placed. Which is the bridge-side pickup and which is the neck-side? I had no idea, so I had to find out.
There are two ways to determine where in the body a pickup is supposed to be placed.
Method 1: Pole spacing
Guitar necks increase in width from nut to heel, and in many guitars the neck-side pickup has narrower pole spacing compared to the bridge-side.
However, there are a few issues with determining a pickup's body position this way.
First, some manufacturers don't even bother using front pickups with narrower spacing compared to the rear.
Second, this only works for pickups that have pole pieces you can see and moreover measure with a vernier caliper.
Third, this absolutely does not work for pickups that use rails or sensors, such as Seymour Duncan Hot Rails or Lace Sensor Gold.
Method 2: Measuring ohm resistance with a multimeter
This is the easier and more accurate way to determine where a pickup should be placed in the guitar body. There is also an added bonus to doing it the multimeter way. At the same time you're checking the resistance, you're also checking if the pickup is dead or not.
Plug in the red lead to the port on your multimeter where ohms can be measured. The black lead goes into COM as usual.
Set the multimeter to measure ohms up to 20K.
Touch one multimeter lead to one wire of the pickup and the other multimeter lead to the other wire of the pickup, then read the multimeter display.
Write down what the reading was for each pickup. The pickup that had the highest reading is the bridge-side, and the pickup with the lowest reading is the neck-side. If testing pickups for a 3-pickup guitar like the Fender Stratocaster, the middle pickup would have a reading in between the bridge-side and neck-side values.
Is this always accurate for every pickup set?
For the vast majority of pickups, yes it is.
Most pickup sets, whether Strat pickup sets, Jaguar pickup sets, Jazzmaster pickup sets, P90 pickup sets or humbucker pickup sets have pickups where the bridge-side has the highest K value and the neck has the lowest value.
I personally do not know of any pickup set sold today that doesn't follow that formula. Some sets have a bridge-side pickup with a ridiculously high K value, but I don't know of any where the neck-side has a higher K than the bridge-side.
If you're wondering what would happen if you installed the bridge-side and neck-side in the wrong positions, the end result would be that one of your pickups would sound really weak, and when both pickups are selected, the sound would be pretty much useless. Nothing is damaged by installing pickups in the wrong position. It just sounds bad.
On a Stratocaster guitar, the middle pickup is the one that needs to be correct more than any other, because that's the one which is reverse-wound (unless it's a vintage period-correct set in which case it wouldn't be). It has to be in the right position or the guitar really won't sound good at all.
Why use 20K on the multimeter?
I do not know of any pickup that has a K value higher than 20K. I also do know know of any pickup that has a K value below 2K.
An average K value doesn't exist because pickup resistance values vary depending on how the manufacturer voices the pickup. However, generally speaking, you'll find most guitar pickups will have a K value of between 6 and 9.
And no, a higher K value doesn't translate to "better", because again, it depends how the manufacturer voices the pickup.