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Hatsubai « Ridiculously amazing feel »
Published on 10/04/11 at 15:54The Custom Shop Strats that Fender makes happen to be some of my absolute favorite strats. They're expensive, but they're worth it -- up to a point. They have this amazing feel to them that's much more personal than the cookie-cutter strats that Fender cranks out day after day. The guitar features an alder body with a maple neck, a rosewood fretboard, 22 frets, dot inlays, a vintage tremolo, three single coils, one volume, two tones and a five way switch.
UTILIZATION
The fretwork on this was superb, and you don't really see that from the regular production line models. The ends were properly beveled, and the tops were crowned nicely. On top of that, they were perfectly level. While I couldn't really get the perfect action I wanted due to the natural radius of the fretboard, I was able to get close. The guitar had a great weight at roughly 7 or so lbs. The rosewood looked very nice and had some cool looking streaks in it that some of the lower end models don't tend to have. It gave it some character, I thought. The vintage trem on this is the standard one you always see, so there's no change there. One nice thing about this was that the nut was properly cut, and it was a bone nut. This helped in both tuning stability and tone.
SOUNDS
The guitar had some lower to medium output single coils, and it was blues tone for days. I first tried this through a Fender Blackface, and it put out some crazy fat sounding clean tones. Slap on a bit of reverb, and you have a clean tone that would rival any guitar out there. I plugged this through a Marshall JCM800, and that's where it really came together. I was able to get a singing lead tone kind of like Eric Johnson once I hit it with a pedal and got some delay going. I was also able to get a nice hard rock tone with this. The overall guitar was extremely resonant, and you could really tell it through these amps. If you plan on playing metal, you might want to look into replacing the pickups in this, but I have a feeling most won't play metal with this guitar.
OVERALL OPINION
If you can afford one of these Custom Shop guitars, I highly recommend it. However, you really have to weigh your options of having a Fender or getting something even more amazing like a Suhr or Anderson. Fender's Custom Shop prices are getting so high lately that it's pretty ridiculous. It's almost getting to Gibson prices at certain times. If you find the guitar speaks to you, buy it. However, if you're wavering wether to get this or another guitar, you might want to check out your other options.
UTILIZATION
The fretwork on this was superb, and you don't really see that from the regular production line models. The ends were properly beveled, and the tops were crowned nicely. On top of that, they were perfectly level. While I couldn't really get the perfect action I wanted due to the natural radius of the fretboard, I was able to get close. The guitar had a great weight at roughly 7 or so lbs. The rosewood looked very nice and had some cool looking streaks in it that some of the lower end models don't tend to have. It gave it some character, I thought. The vintage trem on this is the standard one you always see, so there's no change there. One nice thing about this was that the nut was properly cut, and it was a bone nut. This helped in both tuning stability and tone.
SOUNDS
The guitar had some lower to medium output single coils, and it was blues tone for days. I first tried this through a Fender Blackface, and it put out some crazy fat sounding clean tones. Slap on a bit of reverb, and you have a clean tone that would rival any guitar out there. I plugged this through a Marshall JCM800, and that's where it really came together. I was able to get a singing lead tone kind of like Eric Johnson once I hit it with a pedal and got some delay going. I was also able to get a nice hard rock tone with this. The overall guitar was extremely resonant, and you could really tell it through these amps. If you plan on playing metal, you might want to look into replacing the pickups in this, but I have a feeling most won't play metal with this guitar.
OVERALL OPINION
If you can afford one of these Custom Shop guitars, I highly recommend it. However, you really have to weigh your options of having a Fender or getting something even more amazing like a Suhr or Anderson. Fender's Custom Shop prices are getting so high lately that it's pretty ridiculous. It's almost getting to Gibson prices at certain times. If you find the guitar speaks to you, buy it. However, if you're wavering wether to get this or another guitar, you might want to check out your other options.