Hatsubai « The "other" SRV strat »
Published on 11/18/11 at 13:48SRV was pretty famous for his sunburst stratocaster that he tended to play almost all the time. However, he did have another guitar that some people always seem to forget. Fender decided to pay tribute to this guitar by making a copy of it. This is one of those "perfect replica" guitars, so it's not exactly a guitar for the feint of heart. The guitar features an alder body, a maple neck, 21 frets, dot inlays, a vintage style tremolo, three single coils, one volume, two tones and a five way switch.
UTILIZATION
It's hard to actually talk about build quality on these guitars due to the heavy relicing and whatnot that occurs. The body itself seems to be very close to the Lenny I've seen in pictures, but I can't say for sure. I never played the original, obviously. Mere mortals cannot touch that guitar. Hell, I'm glad to even touch this one considering how expensive we sell it for. The neck seems super broken in, and it's quite comfy to play, but I didn't want to play it too much due to the price of the thing.
SOUNDS
The guitar sounded very good through the Fender Bassman I was playing it through. I first tried it with just a basic clean, and it knocked it out of the ballpark in terms of tone. You could get a super sick blues tone with this guitar without any issues at all. All of the positions were versatile. Once you threw a tubescreamer in front of the amp, you got that instant SRV blues tone that everyone knows and loves. It was very powerful, and you could get a killer sound. However, I only played it for a few minutes to test everything out. This is a crazy expensive guitar that makes me afraid to play it...
OVERALL OPINION
The guitar is a great guitar, make no mistake about it. It sounds awesome, and it really delivers in terms of tone. However, the price that Fender wants for these is ridiculous. You can get multiple custom guitars for the price of this thing. For $17,000, you could even buy a car...
UTILIZATION
It's hard to actually talk about build quality on these guitars due to the heavy relicing and whatnot that occurs. The body itself seems to be very close to the Lenny I've seen in pictures, but I can't say for sure. I never played the original, obviously. Mere mortals cannot touch that guitar. Hell, I'm glad to even touch this one considering how expensive we sell it for. The neck seems super broken in, and it's quite comfy to play, but I didn't want to play it too much due to the price of the thing.
SOUNDS
The guitar sounded very good through the Fender Bassman I was playing it through. I first tried it with just a basic clean, and it knocked it out of the ballpark in terms of tone. You could get a super sick blues tone with this guitar without any issues at all. All of the positions were versatile. Once you threw a tubescreamer in front of the amp, you got that instant SRV blues tone that everyone knows and loves. It was very powerful, and you could get a killer sound. However, I only played it for a few minutes to test everything out. This is a crazy expensive guitar that makes me afraid to play it...
OVERALL OPINION
The guitar is a great guitar, make no mistake about it. It sounds awesome, and it really delivers in terms of tone. However, the price that Fender wants for these is ridiculous. You can get multiple custom guitars for the price of this thing. For $17,000, you could even buy a car...