View other reviews for this product:
mooseherman
Published on 01/26/10 at 14:48
This is a Mexican Fender Stratocaster, with a standard tuning bridge and a maple neck and fretboard. It has three single coil pickups, a five-way selector switch. It also has 21 frets, a volume and two tone knobs.
UTILIZATION
The hardware and setup on this guitar are certainly the biggest drawbacks for me. The Mexican strats have a (mostly unfounded) reputation as being more sloppily made than their American counterparts. In reality, a lot of new American strats are just as bad, but that doesn't excuse this. The intonation on this guitar has been known to be troublesome, and the bridge tends to give certain strings a peculiar, almost muted sound. This could be fixed by replacing a few of the parts and getting it set up, but that shouldn't really be something that you should continually have to do, as far as I'm concerned. Other than that, however, the shape and weight of the guitar are great and comfortable. Getting a good sound, for a good player at least, shouldn't be too hard.
SOUNDS
I use it with a Fender Twin reverb, and it sounds pretty great. It's not quite up there with my older '67 reissue, but I honestly haven't known many guitars that are as good as that. I think that, contrary to my initial expectations, this guitar does have a great sound though. I definitely prefer the clean sound, as I do with most Strats, because the distorted sounds on this model are sometimes thin (unless you have a good distortion pedal, in which case you're in good shape). Great for electric Blues and rock styles, this guitar would suit a great number of players. This is great for my rock, blues, and country styles of playing, but particularly great for my R&B. One thing I enjoyed was that the bridge pickup wasn't too bright, which sometimes bothers me. It seemed to be just right in terms of being bright without being shrill.
OVERALL OPINION
The frustrating thing about this guitar is definitely the suspect setup. The fact that it required so much work for me was frustrating. Whether or not this is true of all these models is unclear, but it definitely gave me a bad taste. The sound however is pretty fantastic, and anyone who's not a real stickler would probably agree. This, being a Mexican model, is usually more affordable than the comparable American models. Considering it's not much worse (if it's worse at all), I'd highly recommend this to anyone under budget constraints, as it will be more than capable of creating the sounds you want. It always plays smoothly and is comfortable, so anyone would be satisfied, if not necessarily thrilled with it.
UTILIZATION
The hardware and setup on this guitar are certainly the biggest drawbacks for me. The Mexican strats have a (mostly unfounded) reputation as being more sloppily made than their American counterparts. In reality, a lot of new American strats are just as bad, but that doesn't excuse this. The intonation on this guitar has been known to be troublesome, and the bridge tends to give certain strings a peculiar, almost muted sound. This could be fixed by replacing a few of the parts and getting it set up, but that shouldn't really be something that you should continually have to do, as far as I'm concerned. Other than that, however, the shape and weight of the guitar are great and comfortable. Getting a good sound, for a good player at least, shouldn't be too hard.
SOUNDS
I use it with a Fender Twin reverb, and it sounds pretty great. It's not quite up there with my older '67 reissue, but I honestly haven't known many guitars that are as good as that. I think that, contrary to my initial expectations, this guitar does have a great sound though. I definitely prefer the clean sound, as I do with most Strats, because the distorted sounds on this model are sometimes thin (unless you have a good distortion pedal, in which case you're in good shape). Great for electric Blues and rock styles, this guitar would suit a great number of players. This is great for my rock, blues, and country styles of playing, but particularly great for my R&B. One thing I enjoyed was that the bridge pickup wasn't too bright, which sometimes bothers me. It seemed to be just right in terms of being bright without being shrill.
OVERALL OPINION
The frustrating thing about this guitar is definitely the suspect setup. The fact that it required so much work for me was frustrating. Whether or not this is true of all these models is unclear, but it definitely gave me a bad taste. The sound however is pretty fantastic, and anyone who's not a real stickler would probably agree. This, being a Mexican model, is usually more affordable than the comparable American models. Considering it's not much worse (if it's worse at all), I'd highly recommend this to anyone under budget constraints, as it will be more than capable of creating the sounds you want. It always plays smoothly and is comfortable, so anyone would be satisfied, if not necessarily thrilled with it.