(hard rock guitar music)
- Hi, it's John Dreyer,
and I'm here with the Squire Stratocaster Pack.
Now the pack is a great way to start
if you're a first-time player,
has everything you need in one box.
In this case, we have a Squire Stratocaster,
a gig bag, a guitar amplifier,
a strap, a cable,
and we even throw in some guitar picks.
So we're gonna open up the box,
see what it all comes with,
plug it all in, get some guitar tones going,
and have some fun,
so let's dig in.
All right, so we removed all of the contents
out of the pack box,
and here's what we have, let's take inventory.
So we have your guitar in its box,
we have a gig bag,
we have your guitar amplifier,
and then in this little white box here,
we have all of your accessories.
So that includes strap,
we have your instrument cable,
we have the tremolo arm that will go onto the Stratocaster,
and then lastly we have a pack
that includes the Allen wrenches,
an extra spring for the tremolo,
which I'll show you later,
and then a couple of picks,
these are Fender medium picks.
All right, so I pulled the amp out of the box,
but right now we're going to do the unveiling of the guitar,
let's take a look at what we got here.
First thing you'll notice when you open the box,
this red tag here,
this is your three-month offer for Fender Play,
so if this is your first time playing,
this is a great way to learn,
or to brush up on some skills.
Okay, put that aside,
and let's take a look at the guitar.
Here we go, all right that looks great.
Some styrofoam here.
All right, looks great.
So here is your Squire Stratocaster.
All right, let's take a quick look
at all the parts of the guitar,
I'm gonna drop this box outta the way, there we go.
All right, we can start up at the head stock,
which is this piece right up here,
I'm gonna take these tags outta the way
just so we can see more clearly.
So then we have your machine heads, or tuners,
this is how you tune the guitar.
Here's your string trees,
to hold the strings down over the nut.
This is your nut here, this white piece.
And then we have your neck.
So on the neck we have your fretboard,
which is the flat part, then we have the frets,
and then position markers, on the fretboard.
The neck attaches to the body,
which is this part right here,
the Strat shaped body.
We have a white pick guard,
we have three, single-coil pick-ups,
neck, middle, and bridge,
and this is your bridge,
with the six individual saddles,
and you can adjust those saddles.
We have volume, tone for neck and middle,
and then tone for the bridge.
And then your five-way selector,
so you can select each pick-up individually,
or combinations of the three pick-ups.
And then we have your output jack.
And lastly, we have your strap pins.
So on the strap pins,
that's where you attach your guitar strap,
and I'll show you that in a minute.
And then if we flip it over really quick,
we have your tremolo cavity,
and the tremolo cavity backplate.
Inside this cavity is the trem block,
which is attached to the bridge.
We have three springs that are attached to a claw hook,
and that's how your tremolo moves up and down.
First let's install the tremolo arm into the guitar.
So you can see on the very end,
the tip of the tremolo arm, it's threaded.
So we're going to insert that into the hole on the bridge.
Now you'll kind of feel it fall into place, there you go.
And then you can screw it in,
around, around, around,
and then you'll feel it get a little snug,
so it's up to you if you prefer to have,
just to be hanging down,
or you can get a little bit more snug,
that way you can place it wherever you want.
So you can have it down, or up,
so it's near where you're playing.
So that's your preference.
All right, so let me show you
how to attach the guitar strap.
So take your guitar strap,
and as you can see,
there's two ends that attach to the strap pins.
I prefer to have the logo,
the Fender logo side facing out,
so we'll take this side first,
and basically just going to attach this around that pin.
Okay, and then pull it up,
make sure it's snug.
And then we're going to take the other end,
and attach that to the other strap end, but first,
because this is a little bit short out of the box,
I'm going to extend this out a little bit.
That right there, take out the excess,
wrap that around, and then apply to the other strap.
And then again, make sure that's secure.
And there we go, we are ready to play.
All right, so now to connect the guitar to the amplifier,
which is very important if you want to get some sound,
one end of the cable, the instrument cable,
will connect to your output jack of the guitar, right there.
And then we take the opposite end,
goes into the input jack of your amplifier, just like that.
All right, let's take a look
at the features of the amplifier,
now that we're plugged in.
Starting from the left side here,
I'm gonna move these tags outta the way,
so we can see clearly.
So we have your input jack,
where the guitar cable is plugged into.
We have your gain control,
to control the overall clean or distorted tones,
as well as a clean and distortion switch there.
We have your volume.
We have a two-band EQ, which is treble and bass.
We have auxiliary-in to connect another sound device
to jam along with tracks.
And then we have your headphone jack for private practice.
And then finally, your on/off switch.
All right, one quick note before we move forward,
the guitar does come
with a clear plastic over the pick guard,
so you want to make sure that you peel that off
fairly soon after you open the box,
just keep note of that.
All right, so now we have the amp mic'd up,
I'm gonna turn the amp on.
EQ-wise on the amp, I have it set fairly flat,
that just means pretty much just in the middle,
on the bass and treble.
And here's what the tone sounds like.
(guitar strumming)
As you can tell, we're out of tune,
so we want to tune up.
And for tuning, I like to use the Fender Tune App,
so we have that here.
It's a quick and easy tune,
you can download that on the app store.
All right, and another note,
it's always a good idea,
especially if the guitar is right out of the case,
or if you just changed your strings,
you want to stretch the strings as you tune, right?
You want to pick up some of the slack
that might be around the tuning pegs.
So I'm just gonna stretch these out real quick.
Just give it a little bit of tug,
you don't want to pull too hard,
you don't want to snap 'em.
And then I'll go ahead and tune,
so start with my high E.
(note playing)
And then finally your low E string.
(note playing)
A little bit more stretch.
(note playing)
All right, now we're in tune.
All right, so let's put this aside for now,
and then let's pick up a pick
from the accessories pack that came with the guitar,
and let's just run through a few tones.
So now we are on the bridge pick-up,
that's this pick-up right here.
(guitar strumming)
And just to show you the variety of tones,
we can go to the second position,
which is the bridge and middle pick-up.
(guitar strumming)
Middle pick-up alone.
(guitar strumming)
Another combination of the middle and neck.
(guitar strumming)
And then the neck pick-up alone,
this one right here.
(guitar strumming)
And then if we want to get a little bit more rockin',
we can turn on the distortion with this switch right here,
and then we have this.
(hard rock guitar music)
All right, so one more tip before we finish up,
want to make sure you keep your accessories package handy,
that includes your Allen wrenches
for your truss rod adjustment,
as well as your saddle adjustment,
and then there's an extra spring in there
for a future adjustment you might need,
so keep that handy.
All right, so what do you think?
That's the Squire Stratocaster Guitar Pack,
everything you need to play guitar, all in one box.
Guitar, amplifier, strap,
cable, and even the guitar picks.
So took the plastic off the pick guard,
took the tags off,
it's looking pretty good.
We're gonna rock out,
but before we go,
if you have your own guitar at home,
please go and enjoy it,
you can go to fender.com for more information,
and stay tuned for more videos, we'll see you.
(hard rock guitar music)