Hey everyone, i'm new to fender and these forums. I just picked up my first Stratocaster today and i am extremely pleased with my purchase. This guitar is awesome! I bought it from my local music store and i was wondering what kind of amp should i get. I was thinking of getting a fender amp. It needs to be loud enough to play with drums and bass in our basement. Im on a budget of about $200-300, any suggestions? thanks

trev

I think you might be slightly mistaken. It takes years and years of hard, constant playing for any significant wear to manifest itself on a Fender neck. Of course some wear faster than others, but I suspect your guitar is fine. If desultory playing resulted in substantive wear music stores would be silly to allow in-house test runs. It's also possible that your presupposition of a particular degree of smoothness merely doesn't coincide with the empirical reality. Some Fender necks are finished in a high gloss, and others in a matte-style -- the former seems "very smooth"; the latter, "mainly smooth". The reality is that sweat will, even over a reasonably long period of time, result in nothing more than corroded strings. My own sweat, for example, is very acidic -- on the human scale! -- and tends to rot strings away: I can get perhaps three hours, one gig, of hard playing before I must change them out.

As for cleaning, I think you'll be fine using any guitar product you find at a music store. All I ever do to my guitars is wipe them down with a microfiber cloth after playing.

Check out Marshall MG series
These are sweat little amps with some neat effects.
Not Bad for a solid state amp and priced in your budget.

Fender Frontman 65R, the 25R is pretty damn loud so the 65R should be.......dare I say it....even louder.

How does this relate to the OP?

you can find a slightly used blues jr for that price. its tube by the way.
a princeton 112 plus, though solidstate, is a killer amp.
i wouldnt trade mine for nothing.
you could possibly find a marshell class5 used for that price.
no its not a fender, but it does have a pretty nice tone.

I think the best budget friendly and not overly loud Fender amp, would be the Super Champ XD. Hybrid Class A tube amp with 16 voices that imitate many great amps, plus reverb, delay, chorus, vibrato. As you can see below, this amp gives you all the tone you'll ever need, save you some money, and you'll never run of options

Here's the amp "voices"
TWEED
1 A vintage tone based on early Fender® Tweed Champ® amps.
2 A fat vintage tone based on early Fender® Tweed Bassman® amps.
3 Heavily overdriven Tweed tone.

Blackface ™
4 A bright vintage tone based on early Fender® Blackface™ amplifiers.
5 A bright, slightly overdriven vintage tone based on early Fender® Blackface™
amplifiers.
6 A bright, heavily overdriven vintage tone based on early Fender® Blackface™
amplifiers.

BRITISH
7 A bright jangly tone reminiscent of early British combo amplifiers.
8 An overdriven vintage tone based on early high-gain British stack amplifiers.
9 A high-gain distorted tone based on modern British stack amplifiers.

HOT ROD
10 A high-gain overdriven tone based on the Fender® Hod Rod® series of amplifiers.
11 A high-gain distorted tone based on specialized boutique amplifiers.
12 More gain, more sustain!

METAL
13 A darker super high-gain scooped metal tone.
14 A sustained super high-gain scooped metal tone based on modern heavy metal
amplifiers like the Fender® Metalhead™.

JAZZ
15
A clean amplifier tone optimized for jazz styles with the character of the Fender®
Jazz King™ amplifier.

ACOUSTIC
16 A super clean amplifier tone with the character of an Acoustasonic™ amplifier good
for acoustic finger-picking.

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


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Hi Hebert and welcome to the Forum,you can get really nice Marshall amps as previously stated in that price range.Vox also makes some great and loud amps in this price range,I have a Pathfinder 15 R with tremolo and reverb that was only $130 and is quite loud but has great tone.Vox also makes amps in this price range with amp modeling and a myriad of effects. You could also look into good used amps,I've bought several used amps over the years and so far haven't had to get any repaired.

_________________
'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

The OP has been edited: it was changed from a question about cleaning based on an assumption that the neck was in poor condition to what you see above. This guy felt his Strat's neck was not as smooth as it could be, a problem he attributed to shelf wear in a music store. I was simply informing him that even with constant playing for months or years, human sweat would have no substantive effect on the finish of his neck.

+1 on the Super Champ XD. I recently purchased one for rehearsal with the band. It is borderline adequate for practice with a drummer. We mic it to get a better mix. The other guitarists' amp is right next to the drummer in our rehearsal space. If it is mic'ed we can turn it up in the drummers monitor.

You could do wonderful things with a slightly used Cyber-Deluxe.

Im not sure if it would be loud enough for your needs, but i love my super chamo xd , if i play my loud its really loud but its a small room, all concrete and no drums, but i would check it out !

I have a number of more expensive amps but my Cyber Deluxe get used most by a long shot.

Try the G-Dec 30 from Fender directly into the board. It could be loud enough without the direct in. But all depends on the acoustics and how loud your friends (bass player & drumer) are playing...