Fender Road Worn Player Stratocaster

Fender was one of the first companies to offer reliced guitars from the factory. A reliced guitar is a new guitar but it is distressed to make it look old. Fender Custom Shop reliced guitars are some of the best Fenders money can buy and now they have a more affordable line of reliced guitars. This guitar features a moderately reliced nitro finish. The nitro finish is applied extra thin so the guitar will show signs of your playing quicker than a normal poly finished guitar. The guitar comes with 3 hot Tex-Mex overwound pickups and a 5 way switch. The position most rearward on the switch selects the bridge position pickup. The next position right selects the bridge and the middle pickups. The middle position on the pickup selector selects the middle pickup on the guitar. The next position selects the middle pickup and the neck pickup. And the selector position closest to the neck selects the neck pickup. The neck has a nicely rounded fretboard with large Dunlop frets. The multi ply fretboard is also aged to fit in with the rest of the guitar.

UTILIZATION

The worn in feel this guitar has makes it a dream to play. The rounded edges on the fretboard feel good in your hand and the jumbo Dunlop frets make playing easy. The fretboard is flatter than what you would have normally got in the 60s and this helps in giving the guitar a buttery smooth action. This with the large frets makes bends perfect and easy. The gloss you would normally have on the back of the neck is not there as per the aging finish and this makes the neck quicker and smoother because that finish on the back of the neck can feel sticky sometimes. The relicing on the finish is right where you would come in contact with the guitar so the guitar feels even smoother than it normally would in those areas.

SOUNDS

With the Tex-Mex pickups you get the classic hot rodded strat sound. With a touch of overdrive you can get all your classic Texas Blues sounds like SRV. With a clean tone dialed in you can still get the classic bell like clean tones that the strats are known for. These pickups are decent for high gain even though I wouldnt recommend it. It is hard for a single coil to sound good with high gain but this guitar is probably the best single coil strat for it. The tone is still brighter and thinner than you would normally want for high gain but the brightness doesnt bite your head off like it would in many strats.

OVERALL OPINION

Fender is now making their famous relic guitars for everyone. There is nothing cooler than a nice worn in guitar that has seen 40 years of gigs. Some people dont have 40 years of patience to get that guitar though. So Fender with their Custom Relic guitars and now their Road Worn series is making it possible for the working musician to get one of these guitars without breaking the bank. If you are looking for a new strat that has a hot rod tone and lots of mojo this could be what you are looking for.