Fender Player II Stratocaster HSS, Maple Fingerboard, Black

Description

The Fender Player II Stratocaster HSS is designed with historically accurate body contours, new vintage-inspired finishes, and a classic logo that harkens back to earlier Fender Stratocasters. It also features modern improvements such as a 22-fret neck, medium-jumbo frets, upgraded bridges for improved sustain, and Alnico 5 pickups that are better suited to delivering the classic Fender tone. The Player II Stratocaster HSS is finished with rounded neck edges, which is an incredibly valuable upgrade. The superior comfort this provides cannot be overstated—you get the smooth, musical feel of a worn fretboard without sacrificing the attractive look and modern features of the Player II Stratocaster HSS.

Although the original Stratocaster was introduced more than 60 years ago, it is more popular than ever. The Player II Stratocaster HSS combines the guitar's sleek, elegant lines with the perfect blend of vintage and modern. It starts with the classic comfort-contoured alder body, a gloss polyester finish, a three-ply parchment pickguard, and a trio of Player Alnico 5 Strat single-coil pickups and a Player Alnico II humbucker. The original Stratocaster controls consisted of a master volume and two tone controls, leaving the bridge pickup without a tone control. But on the Player II Strat, tone control 1 works for both the neck and middle pickups, while tone control 2 is dedicated to the bridge pickup.

Leo Fender designed the original Stratocaster with three single-coil pickups, which made it possible to produce tones that no other guitar could produce—especially after guitarists discovered that they could place the three-way pickup selector in the in-between positions and access the out-of-phase neck/middle and bridge/middle pickup combinations that produced the characteristic “quack” that many seek in their Stratocaster today. On the Fender Player II Stratocaster HSS, Fender departs from the classic pickup configuration and replaces the rear single-coil pickup with an Alnico II humbucker. You still get two sweet-sounding single-coil pickups so you can achieve that sparkling Strat sound, but you also get an Alnico II humbucker so you can expand your tonal palette with fuller and more aggressive rhythm and solo licks.

To give the Fender Player II Stratocaster HSS the playability that satisfies the modern electric guitarist, Fender has equipped the Player II Stratocaster HSS with a comfortable modern C-shaped maple neck and a 9.5″-radius fretboard with 22 medium-jumbo frets. The neck is finished in satin polyurethane, which feels comfortable to hold and does not become “greasy” after hours of playing. With its sleek body contours and highly playable neck, it is no wonder that the Fender Stratocaster has remained one of the most popular electric guitars for decades.

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