I recently bought a brand new standard Strat, and I have one question, Is it shielded or not?
If so, to what extent is it shielded?

Yes, it is. The body cavities have shielding paint and the back of the pickguard is foiled.

_________________
You dig?

That's the first time to hear this.
Can please someone tell me, since when does fender do that? And to what models?

And, Is this shielding adequate and similar/better/worse than a shielding that someone with some experience on the matter would perform?

I always wondered why wasn't Fender doing that for so long.

_________________
Alexander
AMSTD Strat RW Candy Cola +Callaham + Texas Specials +Tortoise shell pickguard/Fender Blues Junior III SN FSR
Salonica-Greece


Macedonia IS GREECE the last 2500 years

The exact year, I don't remember. I do know that it started when they first began producing their American Standard line, back in the early 1980s.

To me, the shielding paint is redundant/irrelevant as the components within the guitar are already effectively grounded and shielded, except for the shielding of the pickups which the paint still does nothing for. The paint MAY be helpful if one plays through deficient house wiring, etc. and needs all the bleeding capacitance they can get.

In Strats, the pickups are the chief receptors for the majority of line noise and still, they are not shielded. At best, sinking them into the pickguard partially protects them if the back of the pickguard is foiled. Even if someone took the time to totally shield the pickups, their tonality would change along with some volume. So, the chances of shielding Strat pickups as a standard operating procedure isn't likely to happen any time soon.

Lastly, let us segue into this this 'star grounding' business which is gaining popularity as a, "must". The truth of the matter is, it is of no consequence in a guitar with passive electronics other than another means to ground all the components.

_________________
You dig?

What is "star grounding" Martian? I've never heard of that.

I think it's where there is one common point where everything is grounded to. (can look like a star with all the wires coming together)

but I could be wrong on this, im no expert.

Over-simplified: It is a system of grounding used in amplifiers to prevent different amounts of voltage from different power units in the single amp chassis from occurring and running through the system, thereby causing hum.

Again, over-simplified: All major components which are to be grounded are wired to this one central ground or 'star' point which in turn, radiates back to the components keeping the voltage singular for the aforementioned power units.

As you can surmise, there are NO power units at all, let alone multiple ones in a passive or usual guitar's circuit where any voltage is quite negligible. Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with choosing to star ground a guitar's circuit. However, I have noticed that many are throwing it out onto the web and the streets that this is a mandatory, "life or death" system which must be in all guitars. As you can now see, this fallacy is indeed, preposterous.

_________________
You dig?

Gotcha. They should call it Voodoo grounding.