A question to Fender Stratocaster owners.

[pagemalicious]

It was my 14th birthday and I wanted to swap my Dime333 black jack for something else (I broke the headstock). I went into a shop that I still love and looked around. I saw two Fender 68 Reissue strats. Both natural, one with Kinman pickups and one stock but with a nicer grain. I took the one with the nicer grain (being 14, I didn't know how good Kinman were).

It felt comfortable and sounded pretty good, so I took it. I still have it (I'm 22 now) and I've completely rewired it because the last lot were shot and changed the bridge pickup to a SD hot stock. I wanna get some Lace Sensors for it at some point.

I haven't owned another guitar that has a better clean tone than my Strat. With some fat 11's on there, it's fat and warm but still has that Strat twang.



I had it refretted a few years ago with Dunlop 6100's. It plays just how a strat should, there's not many strats that play as nice as mine

[Bengal65]

After buying my first Jeff Beck Custom Shop in Surf Green, I had to buy another. The cost was prohibitive to purchase another, but later I found a "used" one collector owned in Mint condition at a fraction of the cost of a new one. It's the Strat for me and I don't have to mod a thing, except both have a Callaham trem Block and SS '64 arm. All Strats need a Callaham.

[Bryan]

My '88 American Strat is on the left. I saw it in the music store but it was way too much for my 17 year old budget. So I got a job and worked from Nov to April of the next year and saved until I could buy it. I had it for quite a while and wasn't totally floored by it. Then I put in the EMG DG-20 pickups im 2000 and was impressed, but still wanting.

Then when the guitar was about 15 years old something in it "clicked". Maybe the wood aged a certain amount or who knows what, but man it just woke up like nothing I'd ever heard before. Now I can't put it away. I can put it down and play something else, but I always come back to it.

In fact all the other guitars you see in the pic are long gone. But that Strat will never be sold. The tiniest of regrets I have is that it isn't a maple neck. But it was the only one in the store and I was hooked on the color. I had never seen a Strat that color and I don't see too many since.

[Bengal65]

Cool story Bryan. Great to hear you hung on to it. You'll eventually come around to the Rosewood board. I know I did, and I like them now.

I can't see the pic somehow, but I figured it's a Rosewood board.

[triplehold]

From my experience beer, sweat, cigarette smoke and lots and lots of woodshedding, rehearsals , jamming and gigging break in any guitar, but somehow strats seem too get broken in the best. Ever see Rory Gallagher drag his strat across the stage by the cord and coax sounds out of of it? That breaks 'em in too. Ever stuck a strats headstock right through a ceiling tile above the stage in some dive and left it hanging there for dramatic effect at the end of a kickass set? I's a great trick, the crowd loves it but some bar owners don't dig it. You can dropkick a strat right across the stage and let it loose in the pit and they're still O.K.. Try that with any other guitar.

[Snoogans]

I was given an old ('83) Squier SQ series neck, and decided to build myself a Strat for minimum outlay. The body is a matching 3-bolt Squier from Ebay, which I had painted by a local bodyshop. He did a bloody good job, for the price of a bottle of Scotch. The pickups and bridge are Wilkinsons. It feels solid and resonant and "lived in" - not like a collection of parts - plays really nicely and sounds like a Strat. I've even managed to resist dropping a humbucker in it! Although I may be tempted by a couple of quarterpounders...

[Outlander]

"74" strat, all original except for a refret.Strung with 10's. Both tone pots are bad, they'll work sometimes if you tap on them briskly. I haven't got the heart to change them. I thought about getting a wired p/guard with new pups and pots. But this thing sounds fantastic!! When I went to the store to pick it up from the fret job the tech told me I really got a good one, that most of the "70'"s era strats weren't that great. He confesed that when he was done with the set-up he played it for almost an hour because he just couldn't put it down. He then tried to get me to sell it to him. I bought this used from the 1'st owner for about $200.00 around 1977. I can't really remember the exact year or price (its been awhile) but it looked like it had never been played when I got it!