I have a pretty new strat (American Special). When I sit down and play it is great. But when I stand up and move, it is like the neck is giving way and the notes go a little flat. The neck is screwed on tight, but it sounds like when you push on the head to make the notes go flat. Anyone else have this problem? It sucks when I play clean and strike a chord and it goes flat when I move.

Does this happen with other guitars you play? Sounds like you have a pretty strong left arm and are strangling your Strat's neck. Work on your technique maybe? If you put a lot of pressure on the neck (moving it fornt to back or side to side) you can make the strings go flat or sharp. This is happens to any guitar either bolt on or set-neck.

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Obligatory gear list: Fender, Rickenbacker, Gibson, Gretsch, Vox, Martin, and more Fender.

I know it isn't me. I've been playing for over 25 years, have had many guitars and this has never happened. And it isn't big moves either. I do have other guitars I play and this doesn't happen with them. This is my first strat though.

Is your bridge set to float? It could be that you are used to a stop-tail bridge and your right hand is putting pressure on your Strat's floating bridge, pushing it down and therefore causing the strings to go out of tune. This happens especially when palm muting with too much pressure from the right hand. But it would make your strings go sharp not flat as you describe. I'm baffled.

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Obligatory gear list: Fender, Rickenbacker, Gibson, Gretsch, Vox, Martin, and more Fender.

Nope, no floating bridge either. I guess I'll take my strat in to get looked at. I never had it set up by a luthier, so I prolly should anyways.

Do you have that guitar strapped tight against you? Since the strap buttons are on the body, it shouldn't make a difference standing or sitting. You may be getting noise interference from related to 60 hz hum altering your tone...

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


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I suspect your neck is simply loose and, when standing, you apply pressure to it in a different fashion. Examine the neck bolts and see if they can be tightened without -- and this is critical -- stripping the screws.

I had a similar problem once with loosing sustain when walking around on stage ..It ended up being a wore loose fitting jack..When walking around the jack was letting the input from the cable float and therefore losing signal strength and that caused clipping of notes and chords...It was very slight and wouldn't happen all the time and others thought i was crazy ..But then it kept getting worse till others began to notice what i was talking about...

It was most noticeable when moving the neck back and forth in a standing position ...The reason being is the jack would let it float in the middle then pick up full strength as the input made contact with the sides of the jack if your following what i'm badly attempting to explain..