I've just picked one of these up for a good price, a sunburst 2005 in good shape. It plays really well and is very resonant acoustically and when played clean through an amp.

However, it's very glassy, quite unpleasant on all pickups when played through moderately overdriven tube amps (I'm mainly a blues/rock player). Not only is the overdriven sound very sharp and harsh, but it also lacks definition, sounding like there's white noise behind each note.

I have quite a few amps and it's similar with all of them. I also have a number of other guitars including other Strats & Teles, and they're all fine.

The EJ is somewhat better through overdrive pedals, especially one with some built-in compression, but the tone is worst of all on the kind of string-skipping arpeggios EJ himself loves to use - for example, the ascending chord arpeggios from Cliffs of Dover sound really terrible on it. Given EJ's signature tone, it's a big disappointment which I don't think can be right.

I've tried adjusting pickup heights, and raising certainly induces the dopplering from pickups too close to strings, as lowering reduces output significantly, but I haven't found a position that solves this problem yet. Indeed, the gnarly tone is so pronounced I'm not even sure if it can be explained by the pickups alone.

I'm raising it in this, the official forum, first. Anyone got any thoughts/ideas/comments? Thanks!

Action too low?

Badly eq'd amp?

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Hi rockbeare, welcome to the Forum. (As a kid I lived for a time near a village called Rockbeare, but I don't suppose that's where your username comes from...)

What you say is interesting and confusing. Of course, impossible to be sure over the internet, but I'm guessing it is not something generic to the pickups. Eric and Fender took a lot of trouble with those units, aiming for a pepped vintage-y '50s sound. They nailed it, to my ears: a friend (my accountant, actually) has an EJ which I've enjoyed playing through his and my amps and by no stretch of the imagination could the sound be described as "sharp, harsh, lacking in definition with a hint of white noise". No sir-ee.

I presume there is some other sort of electrical malfunction going on inside your guitar, but guessing about that is beyond my paygrade, so I'll leave it to one of the wiring gurus to think about further.

Meantime. Aside from this rather important problem, how do you find that Strat otherwise?

Good luck - C

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Thanks for this, nikininja.

I prefer a fairly (but not stupid) low action, and this guitar's action doesn't go that low anyway compared to some I have, but there's no choking. That said, I think you make a good point so I will try raising it to an acoustic height tonight for interest.

(Quite what use I would have for a lead guitar that has to have its strings set 1/4 inch from the frets is another matter, but I will investigate for the sake of clarity!).

EQ on the various amps is what sounds good to me on my other guitars inc. my Strats - moderate gain, no extreme settings.

Clean it sounds fine, pretty good in fact, but through od it sounds really $@!&#*!

I'll post again when I've experimented with the action....

Have you taken a peek "under the hood" to confirm that the pickups are indeed correct for an EJ signature model......?

Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

Hi, Ceri. Rockbeare in Devon, UK? I know it though as you guess it's not the derivation of my username. I'm a player/collector in UK and use the alias simply to protect my identity and my collection's location.

You've read about my problem with the guitar, but as you can see from my post, it plays good and sounds fine through a clean amp, a bit percussive maybe.

I bought it because my search for a clean real '57 with a strong tone had not turned up anything which rang my bell. Since the EJ is based pretty closely on a '57, I thought I would get one to keep me going until the real deal appeared. In fact the EJ feels remarkably similar to several of the '57's I've tried but turned down, because they all sounded glassy on od too! I had imagined a guitar with EJ's endorsement would be much smoother sounding and very detailed through od.

But that said, before you think that the problem might be in my ears or fingers, I don't have the same issues with either of my other Strats (a beautiful '61 and an '01 Roland-ready), nor even my '73 Tele or any of my other guitars.

Best

Hi, Arjay, and thanks. All correct under the hood, and since the issue is on all three pickups the controls work as they should, and the clean sound is fine, I'm not thinking its a dry solder joint somewhere after the selector....

Are you tuning down at all? Eb/D

All I can think when I read your initial post is that the strings are double hitting against the frets? I can't help but get the notion from your initial post that the strings are hitting the fret tops??? Dunno why. Strats don't sound that different across the range, whatever pickups or hardware and wood they have in em.

How is the neck relief on the guitar? We're looking for a nice shallow bend to the neck. So when viewed horizontally the headstock is slightly raised.

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Have you added a treble bleed kit to the guitar? They can do funny things to driven sounds. Particularly if you play mostly with the volume pot down a couple of notches

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I'm no expert tone maven and I don't have an EJ Strat but I have noticed a difference in the overdrive tone I get from my American Standard. Thru my Fender Twin with 6L6 tubes the OD can be kind of harsh without some compression while thru a Marshall or other EL84 tube driven amp the OD is creamier without needing to compress the signal. Could the tubes in your amps be affecting the tone you're hearing? (Duh ) I'll just save everyone the trouble of pointing out the obvious to me the oblivious.

Oh yeah Nik nice to see you back...

It really sounds to me, despite your belief the EJ is closest to the 57 strat, but I think possibly you don't know what its supposed to sound like. You mentioned playing other 57 like strats that didn't do it for you either....

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


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Yep, that's the one. I lived about three miles away for a couple of years ma-a-a-a-any years ago. Nuttin' special about it; the spelling just triggered my memory.



Nah, don't worry. We can tell by the way you talk you know what it's meant to sound like.

...And therefore I'm at a loss. If there's no silly little electrical glitch with the harness (dunno what it would be, but...) then I can only suggest trying to handle another EJ somewhere and see if you feel it is a sound particular to the model's pickups or not. Seems mighty unlikely to me, but otherwise I'm out of ideas.

BTW:

Sorry, are you talking about an actual '57, made in 1957? Not a Reissue?

Then, good Lord! I'm sure you know as well as we do where to look for the Real Thing, so all we can do is wish you luck with that hunt, and please keep us posted on what you find! That's my idea of a fun type of problem to have!

Cheers - C

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Hi again, all. My previous posts were from my office but I'm now back home and am picking up on the various posts, for which thanks, all at once.

I have adjusted the neck for more relief than I would ever normally apply, and have raised the strings much higher than I would tolerate on any guitar, electric or acoustic. Still sounds like a sheet of glass through overdrive.

I forgot to mention I am using 9-46's, not the stock 10's. It's the gauge I use on all my Fenders.

I'm using standard E tuning, no detune. No treble bleed kit installed either - I wouldn't know what one looks like.

My reference to a REAL '57 was because I have been looking out for one to buy and have played some beauties, some in really fine condition and great sounding on clean, but all too thin through overdrive, except for one which had a warmer/fatter tone but wasn't for sale!

I was comparing the EJ to those, not because I expected it to sound the same as the '57's I'd passed on, but because it does actually sound remakably like them - thin. Whereas I really expected an EJ signature to sound much more like EJ - slightly fatter/warmer but still obviously a Strat. Certainly not like shards of glass, worse than a cheap Tele on the bridge wide open. And worst of all on EJ's signature sting-skipping arpeggio chords!!!

As it stands, this guitar is fine for clean work, chiming chords, funk, but it's hopeless for lead. EJ's are not common here in UK, which is why it took me a while to find this one. Being an '05 and thirdhand, it's way out of warranty. But I do know one guy, a high-end dealer and great player, who used to have one so I'm going to email him to get his input. He knows my playing style, pick attack and so on so he may be able to shed some light on things....

I'll report back!

Yeah please do, cos frankly, I'm intrigued.
I can't think what it could be aside from a set up problem. Pickups too low maybe? I doubt it, you seem to have covered enough not to have overlooked that.

All I can think is that perhaps it may be that you're trying too hard to mirror EJ's sound. When in truth he could play anything in the studio and we'd never know what he used. But your other guitars don't exhibit the same problem.

I'm bewildered.

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I read an article a while back that states Eric Johnson plays with the treble turned down on his amp, which explains why under "normal" conditions (treble turned up) the EJ guitars sound glassy.