Hello,
Will a Strat body with a finish showing the grain such as 3 tone burst give more vibrate and resonate more than one in solid colour like black?
Ronald

Hi Ronald: at the risk of irritating those who's posts are to come on this thread... No.

Even if you believe guitarist lore about lacquer and tone it is the thickness of the paint that counts, not the color that is or isn't mixed into it.

Cheers - C

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Hello Ceri,
Given that Fender uses Automotive paints; would the uretane or lacquer be sprayed on top of the opaque colour finishes as opposed to the lacquer being tinted making the colour/lacquer combination thicker than the sunburst guitars in which wood grain may still be seen. I totally agree with less finish letting the wood vibrate.
Ronald

Ha. Well, as far as Fender's various finishes over the years are concerned, there you open a huge and wriggling can of worms. Whole books to be filled on that subject.

A couple of examples. For a three color sunburst Fender did it like this: the whole body was dipped in a huge vat of amber dye, as a quick alternative to hand wiping the dye on in the traditional manner. Then there would be a sealer layer, perhaps vinyl sealer or a flash coat of lacquer or both. Then a semi-trans dark red-brown tinted lacquer was sprayed around the outside to begin the sunburst. After that a black lacquer was sprayed on the outer edge and sides to complete the visual appearance, and also to cover the sides of the guitar where the amber dye would have soaked in more deeply to the end grain and produced an unappealingly uneven darkness to the tone. (That's half the reason Fender sunbursts look the way they do.) Finally several coats of clear lacquer were sprayed on, left to cure and then sanded and buffed to a gloss finish.

That process works the same regardless whether you use nitrocellulose, polyester or polyurethane lacquer. The amber is a dye, the other colors are tinted lacquer.

For a solid color by contrast they had various approaches. For white, just for example, sometimes they clearcoated over the top, sometimes they just gloss buffed the white lacquer itself. Sometimes the solid color was over primed wood, sometimes it was sprayed over a sunburst rejected by quality control, so as not to waste the body.

And there's a whole stack of stuff to say about wood grain fillers, Fullerplast, polyester sealer beneath nitro... and on and on, to the heart's content of the most OCD geekery imaginable.

You are just dipping your toe in a very wide lake, here.

Cheers - C

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Regardless of their variants in manufacturing, it is safe to say that Fender is a class act.
As are Martin acoustics, and I have had a few of those.
This will be my first Fender, well; really my first electric.
Even at 53 years old. But Fender has always been the one lurking in my mind.
Hence all the questions. I am just not sure on what to get.
Ronald

Hi Ronald the universal one size fits all answer here is to try as many as you can as any Fender would be a good choice and you may find a Squier or MIM Fender more to your liking than an MIA Fender.Careful though you may be buying more than one-that's happened to me when in a quandry-hard to explain to the Missus.Happy hunting.

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'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.