I have been told that the old guitars have a certain radius that makes bending strings up high difficult... if the string action is low it will fret out...however i see that the '57, '62 and 70's strats all had a radius of 184mm/7.25...when did this change anyways?/...was it in the 80's when eddie van halen and others made mega string bending popular?... thanks for any info
I think it may have been the 60's when 9.5 started to be popular. I could be wrong. I owned a couple custom shop Nocasters and a 2008 52 reissue that were 7.25 radius. I like my action low so yes I did struggle a bit with fret choke on bends. I then owned a Crook T style that had a compound neck 7.25 to 9.5. Finally I gave up on 7.25 all together. I like 50's style specs all except the 9.5 radius and vintage frets. Smaller vintage frets can also make bends tricky, though some don't have a problem with choking out or the smaller vintage frets.
The guitars I own now a Wildwood 52 thin skin tele, Wildwood 56 thin skin strat and a custom shop nocaster all have 9.5 radius and 6105 frets.
One other thing that can make vintage specs tricky is the rolled edged frets with an aggressive bevel that some people have issues with fret fall off on the high and\or low e. On my 52 and 56 thin skin every now and then I'll knock the high e off the fretboard as the fret real estate is low. One way I minimized this is I had my guitar tech replace the nut and cut the slots in a little narrower. I guess this is just how they made them back in the 50's so this is how they make the vintage reissues.
One thing of note is that some more educated than I in vintage guitars actually say that radius specs were all over the place in the early years. ranging from 7.25 to 9.5. Maybe because of the nature of hand made necks.
I've never owned an actual 50's fender. I've owned a few 60's and they were all 9.5 radius. And they were all tele's. A 62, a 67 and a 68