Fender duo sonic loaded pickguard upgrade#

Fender duo sonic loaded pickguard upgrade#

Anyone else find this to be true? If so, would a pup upgrade be moot? I dig the overall sound of the neck pup, it has a really cool crisp acoustic quality clean but still sounds pretty fat, so maybe looking for something that retains these qualities but sounds good with some dirt too.Īnyway, any suggestions would be appreciated. I'm not really into the sound of the bridge and I've read that this is a common opinion and due to the placement of it. I figured I'd start with the pots (volume knob cuts the signal if touched right) and probably pups too. I'd really like to make this thing gig-worthy. Pots, pups, pickguard (hate the gold), and maybe a new bridge and tuners. I thought this might make a nice project so I was hoping to get some suggestions on some good upgrades. Can't really find much online but I'm pretty sure its one of the recent Classic Vibe Squiers. Once set up right, I'm certain I could make it sound just fine with any amp.Hey all, last night I dug my wife's Squier Duo Sonic out of the closet for the first time in a few years and I forgot how fun this little guitar is to play. You have to bear in mind I played one at a guitar store that wasn't set up to my preferences. But again, the red one just stole the show with how good it looked.Ĭould you buy this guitar unheard/unplayed and be comfortable with the buy? With some guitars you can't do that, but you could with this one. One was Arctic White and the other Torino Red as described above. There were no flaws in either of the two I tried. There's just something about the 'Duo-Sonic Single-coil' (that's what Fender calls it) that makes one amp sound great and another sound like total garbage.īuild quality was good. This is true of any electric, but with the Duo-Sonic it was really obvious. The only thing that really surprised me is how different the guitar sounds when going from amp to amp. It's a good little guitar that has some genuine mojo to it. But it was definitely not something I felt instantly comfortable playing.Īnother thing I didn't like is that I would sometimes whack the front pickup (i.e. If I owned this guitar then yes, I eventually would get used to it. The tuners felt way too close to me, I found myself getting lost on the neck sometimes, and I was also hitting wrong notes because of the closer fret spacing. The Duo-Sonic, while having an offset waist construction, has a neck position I didn't really care for. That guitar has a 25.5' scale, but also has offset waist construction, meaning the neck is 'pushed out' slightly further than a Stratocaster or Telecaster. But this is due to the fact that short scale necks usually don't agree with me. The short scale 1-piece maple neck just felt odd.

The Duo-Sonic seemed to hate a tube-type VOX combo but loved a tube-type Orange cube combo. However, I found that the tonal character is greatly affected by what amp the guitar is plugged into. The sound of the pickups is good, leaning more toward a Strat-like tone. The turn of the knobs had good give to them also. And yes, they have side screws for easy adjustment. They're Telecaster style flat-top with knurled sides. Given the fact the vast majority of electric guitars use plastic-tip switches, to actually use one that's 100% metal is nice. It's a big, chunky, all-metal switch and feels good to use. My favorite part of the guitar is the 3-way switch. This is actually something I totally agree with because 9-42 on a short scale is a bit floppy, even for me (and I prefer super light strings). The body is made from alder wood.Ītypical is the fact the guitar comes loaded with 10-46 strings instead of the usual 9-42 size. The bridge is 'hardtail Strat', and yes the strings do go through the body. Neck is one-piece maple with 9.5' fingerboard radius and loaded with 22 medium jumbo frets. This guitar is a short scale 24.0' (for reference, a Stratocaster is 25.5' and a Les Paul is 24.75').

I chose the single/single because that's what I like, and that's the one I'm going to talk about. One is a humbucker/single Duo-Sonic HS model and the other a single/single. The red and the mint guard go together very nicely. You absolutely can't tell at all from internet photos that the pick guard is a 3-ply mint green. Not even Fender themselves got good photos of this guitar. The Torino Red version looks unbelievably cool in person but awful in online photos. And speaking of which, the look of the Fender Duo-Sonic is the first thing I'll start with. I really wasn't too impressed with that guitar mainly for the reason I just didn't like the look. The last time I played one of these, it was a Squier Duo-Sonic in gold. Last weekend I tried out three guitars and two of them were Fender Duo-Sonic models. A little Fender that's good - when plugged into the right amp.