« oldschool HSS strat »

This guitar is made to look like a 70s modded strat. With its big headstock and natural finish, these are all 70s things and the humbucker in the bridge was a very common mod at the time. With this strat you get an alder body. A bolt on maple neck with a rosewood fretboard. The neck has a modern C profile to it and the fretboard has a 9.5 inch radius to it. The neck has 22 Jumbo frets. Up top you get 6 nonlocking tuners on the big 70s style headstock. There is a non locking tremolo bridge down at the bottom. The pickups are in an HSS configuration with an "Atomic" humbucker in the bridge with 2 hot single coils in the neck and middle. The finish is a thin coat of nitro over the natural wood to give you a cool look with a vintage feel.

UTILIZATION

This strat has a really nice feel to it because of the neck. It feels not unlike the custom shop models they put out that come with huge frets. This guitar having jumbo frets and a 9.5 inch radius mean you can really get a low action and really bend notes forever. The rest of the guitar feels pretty stratty. The nitro finish is a bit sticky at first but this goes away with playing. The neck bolt is big and gets in the way on the high frets. The guitar will go out of tune if you use the tremolo a lot.

SOUNDS

HSS strats still sound like strats but with more beef in the 1 position. The switching is typical 5 way switch with just a humbucker in the bridge. Position 1 you get the full on humbucker. This humbucker is pretty hot but it is not metal hot. It does not completely over power the single coils. It complements them well. It is more suitable for high gain tones than the single coils. It is a bit smoother sounding overall and has more thickness to it. You still get the bell like tones from the single coils in the middle and the neck. You can get that ringing single coil sound from the neck position. That kinda smooth but kind of bitey single coil sound. When you combine the bridge humbucker with the middle single coil you get a cool tone that kind of reminds me of a P90 with the single coil clarity up top with the smoothness and bottom end of the humbucker.

OVERALL OPINION

This is one of my favorite strats that Fender has put out recently. I love the big headstock look. Some people say they make the guitar sound better, I just think it looks cool. The original strat was supposed to have a big headstock like this but they made it smaller to cut costs. The jumbo frets make up for the reletively round radius of the fretboards. Coming from Gibsons and super strats with radiuses higher than 14 inches a 9 inch radius is pretty round but when you put big frets on it you get some of the modern feel back. If you are looking for a nice HSS strat that plays really well and looks pretty vintage the Highway 1 is a good choice.