Fender Yngwie Malmsteen Stratocaster [1988-1997]

Yngwie Malmsteen was one of the first people to ever get a signature guitar and for good reason. This guitar is an absolute beast. It has an alder body with a maple neck and scalloped maple fretboard, 21 extra jumbo frets, a vintage tremolo, SSS configuration, one volume, disconnected tone pots and a three way switch.

UTILIZATION

These guitars are absolutely killer. The main draw to this guitar is obviously a scalloped neck. For those of you who really dig into your strings, don't even bother playing this guitar. You'll make it go out of tune like no tomorrow. You have to have a very light touch to play these things, and the jumbo frets make it like you're playing on air. You should watch out for the high e slipping off as that can be a big issue with these guitars. There's also issues of the neck pocket not being tight, so check that out too.

SOUNDS

This guitar is pretty much built to shred. It comes equipped with YJM and HS3 DiMarzio pickups, although the current production ones recently changed to Seymour Duncans. The YJM in the bridge is fairly bright, and it really doesn't sound like a single. In fact, none of these sound like a normal single coil. They have super low output, so you'll probably be cranking your gain. Clean tones sound somewhat abysmal, but the high gain tones are pretty cool. Personally, I prefer hotter pickups than what these offer, but it's all personal taste.

OVERALL OPINION

Be sure to watch out for the high e slipping off and the neck joint gaps. Aside from that, these are pretty good guitars. The scallops got a lot deeper some time around '06 or so, and they also started introducing some machine bolts on the neck instead of normal wood screws for a more secure connection. There's also the switch between the '50s and '70s headstock later in the years, so there are tons of different configurations of this guitar that you can choose from.