After about 35 years of not having a guitar in my hand, I felt the urge.
I ended up getting the Fender FSR Standard Stratocaster Electric Guitar (Ash Body) from Musician's Friend.
So far I could only find 2 issues:
1. The tremolo arm tension spring was missing. Probably the easiest thing to do is just to order the 12 spring kit from them.
2. The E1 string (thinest) has a very slight dull sound to it when I pick it open. The sound is good when I press the string against any frets.

I suppose that this comes from the nut. There is no buzz to it, or at least I cannot hear it. Is there anything that I can do to bring this string back to life when the string is picked open? As I mentioned, the sound is just very slightly dull.

Thanks!
[/url]

I'd call them and ask for them to replace it if not they might put you onto Fender.



Sounds like either the nut slot needs to be widened or the string does not have a good break angle in the nut which can both deaden the string.

Try another string first in it (same gauge should be a .009) and if that is no good a luthier should be able to fix it in a few seconds. You might not want a setup tech to touch it unless they make a lot of nuts.

I have found American pickups do not line up properly on MIM strats. I believe the "vintage" tremolo saddles being so close keeps the high e string. I had a MIM Lonestar strat and noticed that problem. I could hear the e string, but it was no where near as loud as the D or G, even the B. Pole heights aside, the B string shouldn't be louder then the high e.. Fender told me to take it to an authorized repair shop. My closer inspection on my own proved its the pickups and saddle mismatch. Maybe your problem is different. I had purchased an equalizer to compensate. No one should have to do that....

_________________
"Epitaph on a blues musician’s tombstone: “I didn’t wake up this morning”" Davy Knowles


facebook.com/313DBC

i had the problem on my squier strat of one of the strings not being as loud as the others and therefore not sounding good. i fixed it by adjusting the height of the pickup. since the pickups are slanted the high e side was very low compared to the low e so i screwed the high e side up and now sounds fine to me.

I too would be looking at the break angle of that strings slot first. Make sure your string tree is screwed down as far as it will go, creating a good bit of downforce in the nut slot.

Its a doddle of a repair if you decide to do it yourself. If you get it wrong though, theres a good deal of damage that can happen.

All you really need is a welding tip cleaner.
.
Put a bit of masking tape butting up to your nut on either side of it.
Now what you want to do is create a angle in the nutslot, so the freboard side of the slot is a smidgen higher than the headstock side. Use the thinnest welding tip cleaner and make a couple of light passes through the slot with the tip cleaner angled down at the headstock end.

I'll put some pictures up later, this is hard to follow without seeing what I'm on about. Please dont touch the mod till then.

The welding tip cleaners are absolutely the best tool in the world for nutslots. They really give a nice smooth groove with a round bottom.
(I had to get that in somewhere )

_________________
No no and no