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The Latest Breaking News from STRAT

From Hendrix’s pyrotechnics to Cory Wong’s hot-buttered funk, for 72 years the Strat has revolutionized how we play guitar. These are the 25 players who wrote – and burnt – the playbook

The Fender Stratocaster would just be a glorified carpentry project without the players who danced across its neck and gave it life. Here we celebrate 25 of the best

Guitar World

Now Fender hits Yamaha with a cease-and-desist as it widens legal campaign over Stratocaster copyright

The legal battle over the design of S-style guitars takes a Goliath vs Goliath turn...

MusicRadar

“Snoop told us, ‘The world needs D12. They’re screamin’ for it. Don’t stop now’”: The Detroit hip-hop icons are back with red-hot flows and real guitar riffs – and they’ve brought Eminem’s right-hand guitar man along for the ride

Jeff Bass is the Grammy-winning guitarist behind Eminem’s Lose Yourself. He explains how he ditched samples for genuine performances, and how his son Jake is continuing the tradition on new album D12 Forever

Guitar World

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Fender vs Everyone: what you need to know as the world’s largest guitar firm takes on, er... the world

Retail giant Thomann is taking legal action, guitarists are exploding on both sides of the debate, and Stratocaster has become a dirty word. How on Earth did we get here?

Guitar World

“I was like, ‘Let’s freshen up the electric guitar.’ 60 years later, you’re still putting out tributes to the station wagon”: The story of John Mayer’s Fender fallout – and how it gave birth to the Stratocaster’s biggest rival

Mayer left Fender after his wishes for an elevated S-style fell on deaf ears – and he found the perfect partner in PRS and the Silver Sky

Guitar World

“The focus is on products that completely replicate the exact body design”: Fender is finally speaking out on its cease-and-desist strategy. We reveal the company’s endgame, how it plans to work with rivals and who it’s really going after

Fender might not be declaring war after all – but if its legal campaign succeeds, the guitar market will change forever

Guitar World

“I thought, ‘That’s the guitar Mike Bloomfield played…’ I just had to buy it”: The mistake that led Robben Ford to buy his first great instrument –and how Miles Davis and Jeff Beck took him to the Strat

As Ford returns with Two Shades of Blue, the Californian guitar legend drops by for a video lesson and to talk all things guitar, from his adventures with big-box jazz models to Strats

Guitar World

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“I got to design a guitar that gave me exactly what I was looking for in contrast to my Strats”: How Cory Wong embraced humbuckers to reimagine Ernie Ball Music Man’s iconic bass for a signature electric with “that George Benson sound”

With the funk guitar maestro’s signature StingRay II now available in an affordable Sterling By Music Man version, Wong checks in to talk about the making of a dual-humbucker doozy and what it gives him that the Strat can't

MusicRadar

“‘Labor of love’ gets thrown around too often, but collaborating with Yamaha to recreate my guitar has been exactly that”: The Yamaha Revstar pulled Chris Buck away from Strat loyalty – and his new signature model boasts some tantalizing personal touches

A recreation of Buck's cherished custom Revstar, the RS02CB departs from the design of its siblings in a few key ways

Guitar World

“One of the first times I met Noel, I was round his house. He went, ‘This is what I played on Don’t Look Back in Anger.’ I was like, ‘What?’” Gem Archer on the Strat’s secret spot in Oasis history

Noel Gallagher largely stays loyal to his Gibson guitars for Oasis – but there was one notable exception

Guitar World

“The guitar I learned to play on isn’t worth much, but I’ve played it at thousands of concerts and hundreds of recording sessions”: He’s performed on over 500 albums. Now Marcus Deml is making breathtaking guitar instrumentals under his own name

He spent 12-hour days learning at GIT in the shred era. But for his Strat-led solo showcase, Deml relied mainly on his ears and a religious approach to tone

Guitar World

“I’m nervousof that guitar because it’s so expensive. I can barely look at it”: Biffy Clyro’s Simon Neil on how you can shake the Earth with one finger, and why he fell in love with Kirk Hammett’s Greeny – even if he’s still Team Strat

With their 10th album, Futique, Biffy Clyro remind us exactly why they are one of the most important rock bands of the modern age

Guitar World

“The quality of guitars didn’t plummet overnight – some might argue that it remained high for at least a decade”: Fender CBS guitars get a bad rep – but what actually changed?

The CBS takeover of Fender was many things but it was not an overnight revolution. We track the key changes to its builds through the era

Guitar World

“Whatever magic John brought to the Chili Peppers, I didn’t have that style of magic”: Dave Navarro was the odd man out when he replaced John Frusciante in the Red Hot Chili Peppers. But 30 years later, he has no regrets

Emerging from the wreckage of Jane's Addiction, Navarro turned down a spot in Guns N' Roses in favor of a band he felt more of a connection with. The resulting album, One Hot Minute, was polarizing, but the guitarist sees it as a “difficult but valuable” part of his career

Guitar World

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MusicRadar

"For a player who sits in the crossover between vintage tone and modern playability, it’s hard to imagine a guitar more perfectly suited": Fender American Ultra Luxe Vintage '60s Stratocaster review

Fender introduces the American Ultra Luxe Vintage, aiming to bring the playability of the Ultra II line to a player who prefers the aesthetic and tone of a more traditional character

Guitar World

“The first thing that I grabbed when I was like, ‘We’ve got to get the hell out of here’ was the double-neck that Alex Lifeson gave me”: Primus’ Larry LaLonde opens up on losing his house and nearly all his gear in the devastating California wildfires

LaLonde estimates that he lost about 58 guitars in the wildfire, including the “Sailing on the Seas of Cheese” Strat he had since high school

Guitar World

“It’s like a Jazzmaster on steroids, but you still have that Strat essence”: Fender’s limited-edition Ariel Posen signature is a conceptual hybrid that blends two of the slide master’s favorite guitars together

The Jazzmaster/Stratocaster mash-up debuts custom pickups designed by Tim Shaw and a spec sheet that blurs the boundaries between the two classic Fender designs

Guitar World

“It just never felt like it worked with Queens. There’s something about it – it’s a little too ordinary”: Troy Van Leeuwen explains why Queens of the Stone Age are not a Fender Strat band

The alt-rock maverick doubles down on his love for offsets and the Tele's versatile tone

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Guitar World

“I love my Strat; I’m a Strat guy through and through, but I just needed a guitar with humbuckers”: Cory Wong on the making of his signature StingRay and how Vulfpeck just, y’know, made an album during a show

The funkmeister guitarist is back with a whirlwind of new recording projects in his wake, and a fresh new signature guitar by his side

Guitar World

“People forget that in the ’80s, the Fender Strat was like having an old car and someone saying, ‘Why are you driving that piece of crap?’” Yngwie Malmsteen explains how he broke the mold for rock guitar – and brought the Strat in from the cold

After the one-two punch of Rising Force and Marching out, rock guitar was never the same again. Malmsteen takes us back to 1985 – a different world – to explain just what was going on

MusicRadar

“An amazing piece of history from the British blues scene”: Robert Plant is selling a trove of gear for charity – including a John Birch-modded ‘62 Stratocaster with two switches that once belonged to Stan Webb of Chicken Shack

The 1990 Les Paul that Les Paul gave the former Led Zeppelin frontman has been sold but that Strat is one super-cool refin – so too the mandolin and resonator

Guitar World

“I wanted a whole bunch of pickups, four or five. But Leo said they wouldn’t fit”: The creation and evolution of the Stratocaster, Leo Fender's greatest invention

Timeless, iconic, yet also indisputably a product of the era in which it was designed, the Stratocaster was shaped in huge part by a few oft-overlooked players – one of whom suggested the whammy bar so he could get more money as a session guitarist

Guitar World

“We’ve added more versatility into the Strat footprint”: Lollar looks to breathe new life into Strat single coils with the Super-Casters – gold foil-covered pickups with a “larger than life” sound

With bigger and longer magnets, the Super-Casters serve up classic Strat sounds and then some

Guitar World

“Country players don’t get as much credit as the prog guys. Shining a light on how cool country guitar can be was important to me”: Bilmuri are fusing metalcore and country using Strats, ‘fighter jet’ solos and tone tips from Sleep Token

Former Attack Attack! guitarist Johnny Franck on crafting one of 2024’s biggest rock albums, learning not to flex – and why you should never ever use fifth position on a Strat

MusicRadar

“The ‘gray bottoms’ have a little more high output – they have a punchier sound to them”: Joe Bonamassa and Seymour Duncan put pre-CBS tones on the menu with “Greenburst” Stratocaster pickup set

The hottest mod of the year? These replicate the same gray-bottomed single-coils in the ’64 Stratocaster that stopped Bonamassa in his tracks at Norman’s Rare Guitars

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