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The American Standard Stratocaster alongside its similarly-updated siblings

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The original Fender American Standard (introduced in 1986) and the later American Series guitars (unveiled in 2000) were always about no-nonsense gigability. The new-for-2008 American Standards are no different.

Pulling the Strat from the chunky and frankly excellent new rectangular Fender/SKB case there’s a definite sense of purpose. This isn’t an instrument to covet – it needs a stage. 1, 2, 3, 4…

Build

Little has changed from the American Series with the overall construction. Here we have an alder body (ash is only used on the sienna sunburst finish), and though any jointing is hidden by the opaque Olympic white polyurethane finish we’d guess, typically, Fender uses a three-piece spread.

The body is routed for an H/S/H configuration, something to bear in mind if you want to retrofit a bridge or neck humbucker at a later stage. As ever, the contouring is not quite as sexy as the vintage reissue, or classic examples of the original, but it’s far from clunky and you’re reminded, especially in this finish, just how futuristic the guitar with all its contours and curves must have seemed some 54 years ago – not least when viewed alongside the rudimentary Telecaster shaping.

As with the American Series both rosewood and maple ’boards are offered. The rosewood, of course, is a separate piece added to the maple neck; the maple option doesn’t have a separate fingerboard – the frets are installed into the front face of the thicker neck blank.

One change here is that the fingerboard (maple only) is now gloss finished, as is the headstock face, though the neck back remains satin. It’s not going to please everyone; it feels and looks very new but, unlike the heavy finish on seventies-era Fenders, the finish looks thin and the big frets – approx 3mm wide by 1mm high – have more than enough girth for easy, slick playability.

Typically we have a modern ‘C’ profile (approx 20.7mm at the first fret and 22.6mm at the 12th) but the shoulders and fingerboard edges are nicely rounded, along with the fret ends, while the fret tops gleam, mirror-like.

Set-up – with the supplied 0.009s – is low and snappy and with your first strums and licks it’s unquestionable what instrument you’re playing.

Subtle changes to the new series concern the finishing. The neck, for example, has a marginally deeper tint to the finish that looks less anaemic than the previous models, but less perma-tan looking than some lower-priced Fenders and numerous copies.

This finish change, says Fender’s Justin Norvell, “provides a richer tint hue and gloss. The all-satin, barely tinted old version is more a remnant from the first American Standard incarnation in 1986, which was when these instruments were in step with the contemporaries of their time (like Charvel, now also owned by FMIC).”