Fender Player II Modified Stratocaster review: “it gives Fender’s US instruments a run for their money”
$1,049/£949, fender.com
Let’s face it, most of us have at some point modded one of our electric guitars, indeed for many of us, part of the fun in a journey with a guitar is modding it to make it our own, whether it’s a total re-finish, parts swap, or the quest to expand the tonal palette of a particular instrument with some choice pickup substitution.
READ MORE: Fender Player II Modified Stratocaster HSS Floyd Rose review: “you may have just found your soul mate”
In today’s frenzied world of binge-watch TV boxsets, instant food deliveries, and endlessly scrolling social media, lots of us think we need everything yesterday. Scouring forums, reading reviews, sourcing parts, waiting months for work or refinishing, whilst fun for many, can be a time-consuming and costly process. What if we could buy the guitar with the mods already done right out of the box?
Image: Adam Gasson for Guitar.com
Well that’s just what Fender has done in this expansion of its already impressive Player II series, adding a bunch of modern amenities to the classic recipe in the shape of the new Player II Modified Stratocaster.
Fender Player II Modified Stratocaster – what is it?
The Player II range represents some of the finest guitars to come out of Fender’s Ensenada, Mexico factory to date – the reviews of the various Strats, Teles and Jazzmasters that launched last year were suitably effusive in that regard. But they were unquestionably guitars spec’d with the classic accoutrements of Leo Fender’s legendary masterpieces at heart.
The impressive fundamentals of the Player II guitars have already made them popular modding platforms for more experienced and partial players, who know that a quick swap of hardware or pickups could elevate an already impressive instrument into something that was very much pro-ready.
Image: Adam Gasson for Guitar.com
The Player II Modified range basically takes the strain of all that for you. So in the case of the Strat we have here, it means we get a set of Fender’s all-new Noiseless single-coil pickups, short-post locking tuners, a Tusq nut, and two-point floating trem with block steel saddles, plus a chamfered trem block for increased travel. Under the hood there’s also an enhanced wiring package that lets you add the neck pickup into positions one and two with the pull up of the volume pot, and like the Mike McCready signature Strat, there’s also a treble bleed circuit. In essence, it’s a lot closer in spec and intention to Fender’s American Professional II range, which will cost you an awful lot more.
Fender Player II Modified Stratocaster – build and playability
The first thing I notice upon picking up the guitar is its nice weight out of the box, and a gorgeous feeling one-piece maple neck. The modern C profile and factory-rolled fingerboard edges are retained from the impressive vanilla Player II, and combined with the beautiful smooth satin finish, slick action and jumbo frets, it’s a remarkably easy and fluid guitar to play.
Image: Adam Gasson for Guitar.com
The presence of locking tuners and a Graph Tech Tusq nut should enhance the solid tuning stability of any Strat, and so it is here – combining with that two-point Tremolo to offer a smooth and expressive performance that always returns to pitch.
The Sunshine Yellow finish here might not be to everyone’s taste, but I think it pairs rather nicely with the black pickguard to give a modern Strat twist on the classic ‘blackguard’ Tele colour scheme. If it’s not your bag, then I’m sure one of the Olympic Pearl, Harvest Green Metallic, Dusk or Electric Blue options will take your fancy… or there’s always the more ubiquitous 3-Colour Sunburst option.
Fender Player II Modified Stratocaster – sounds
The best description of the sounds this guitar produces is to think of a traditional Strat, but in higher definition. Bigger, crisper, cleaner, no hum – almost a ready-produced tone that players who use digital modellers or record direct will appreciate.
The Player II Fender Noiseless Strat pickups here read a touch hotter than standard Strat pickups, all seem to be in the 10-12K range on my meter. But when combined with rolling off the volume control, the tremendously useful treble bleed cap brilliantly retains top-end clarity. The Player II Modified dishes up a superb and broad palette of classic Strat sounds.
Most revelatory compared to my usual reference maple-necked Strat, even with higher-gain settings, is the almost unnerving absence of 60-cycle hum from the Noiseless pickups – a bonus not to be discounted for playing loud stages or working in front of computer monitors in a studio.
Image: Adam Gasson for Guitar.com
The bridge pickup is punchy without being abrasive, offering powerful classic twang snarl with gain and plenty of snap to low notes with cleaner sounds. The oft underused, but my personal favourite, middle position is perfect for singing sweet melody lines and strumming chords. The neck position gives us the classic flutey lead tones that Gilmour and Hendrix revelled in, but there’s more here. These pickups can handle more gain than a classic Strat set without extraneous noise becoming an issue – giving it a broader palette to work with across the board.
There is a modern hi-fi sheen to the top-end voice of the guitar that I’d put down to these Noiseless pickups, and it sits perfectly for indie jangle and pop and retains clarity under serious gain even into digital modellers and pedal-laden boards. Stepping on my favourite high-gain fuzz pedal with a splash of chorus sets us firmly in shoegaze heaven.
Plugging into a high-gain modern rock setup, the Player II Modified Strat retains impressive clarity and note definition. Rolling down the volume control retains top-end detail thanks to the well-tuned treble bleed circuit, and adds greater breadth to an already versatile guitar.
Image: Adam Gasson for Guitar.com
Setting your amp or drive pedal gain a touch higher for lead sounds and then playing most of the time at 6-8 on the volume control before jumping to 10 for leads and riffs to cut through in a band mix is a super way to get so much more from your setup.
It shouldn’t be underestimated how useful a mod the push-pull switching is here. Having the ability to add the neck pickup to the bridge in position one takes us squarely to Tele land, albeit with the Strat’s calling card of tactile top-end sweetness. It’s the kind of mod I wish I had on all my Strats – and it’s going to be a huge selling point for these guitars in a guitar shop playtest setting, no doubt.
Fender Player II Modified Stratocaster – should I buy one?
Many Strat fans will prefer the characterful idiosyncrasies of a classic set-up, and Fender caters very well to those players with the Vintera II and American Original lines. Nobody’s going to take your microphonic pickups and bent steel saddles away from you just because this thing exists.
But for more contemporary spec-inclined players who work in noisy venues or record regularly with screens and other sources of audio interference as challenges, the range of classic and modern tones on offer here is hugely compelling.
It’s also nice to see a gigbag included (Fender ditched them from the base Player II range) but the basic Fender bag remains a somewhat non-reassuring thing – it would have been better to see that get a bit of modification love too. But that aside, Fender has created what is a superbly professionally-spec’d guitar that gives its US instruments a run for their money – and the biggest winner when that happens is us players.
Fender Player II Modified Stratocaster – alternatives
If you want some genuine Leo Fender pedigree, then G&L’s Tribute Legacy ($649/£545) could be classed as the man himself’s final word on the S-type, with a similarly modded feel. PRS also has taken a stab at bringing the Strat into the 21st century with the SE Silver Sky ($849/£849) – its sounds are very much rooted in the classics, however.
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