Fender Player II Strat RW BCG

I have to say I am very very pleasantly surprised with the Player II series stratocaster.

I owned a Player I that I sold after a year and it had it's issues (sharp frets, a couple of finish flaws, badly cut nut..).
I was a bit sceptical about the new version but I pulled the trigger and I'm glad I did.

The guitar came in with absolutely 0 issues. Frets are perfectly smooth around the edges, the rolled fretboard feels nice (even though it's not as rolled as the America pro ii series) and it plays and sounds great. Keep in mind though that it needed a bit of a setup.

I had to tighten the truss rod, hydrate the fretboard with Dunlop 02 and add some pencil graphite to the nut because it would "plink" every time I tuned the guitar. After doing these things the guitar is perfect for me. Plays great and sounds like a strat. I don't need much more!

Order #1:
Arrived with neck pocket crack and scratched off lacquer on the truss rod hole. Rolled fret board edges feel nice but look so badly made, edge is very uneven and wobbly looking, like it was beaten up and covered with lacquer on top.

Order #2:
Second one had a significant paint mark in the body near the strap lock (top one where you see it while playing) and big scratches near neck pocket. Also pickguard had a deep scratch through both protective layers (there are 2). Didn't even plugged it, just packed back after 10 minutes inspection.

Overall I really like the looks of the guitar, color combination is just perfect to my taste, probably the best in the current Fender line. Sounds great -bright, snappy and responsive. Satin neck is pleasantly comfortable, Modern C profile is on the thinner side but very playable. Nut is ok, but would probably change it to bone or tusq.

But the quality control is just unacceptable. I didn't expect to have 2 MIMs to have such significant issues. So be aware and inspect your particular one with attention.

Thomann service is great as always, so thank you for that!

Bought this to upgrade from a Squier Affinity Strat and while it looks incredible and I’ll be keeping it, the setup out of the box was really poor and made me appreciate the Affinity a lot more. The bridge was pulling up from the body, the nut was way too high and needed filing on the top two strings, the bridge pickup height was way off, super dry fretboard, etc…Just didn’t sound or play great out of the box, which was disappointing. Luckily I have a great luthier who I’m sure will fix all the issues and turn this into a 5 out of 5 instrument, but in this case it was pretty clear that no one had given the guitar a good look before sending it out.