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This is a spinoff of my thread about HM Strats, but it deserves an entirely new discussion.
I mentioned in that thread that a dealer in my area has/had a pink HM Strat with the maple board. This one was NOS from the late 80's and he just doesn't seem to have a market for it. Anyway, I decided to make the trip over there today. They had told me on the phone that they couldn't find it and that it might have sold, but considering how huge and cluttered this store is (Music Outlet in Sevierville, TN), I wanted to be sure. I remember seeing this guitar about 12 years ago in their old location and saw it for the last time a few months ago. It just seemed to be a fixture there for the past several years.
So I went over there, looked around and didn't see it. I asked the employees (awesome folks, by the way), including the guy who had helped me on the phone. After making about three rounds through the store checking out every little nook and cranny, he and another employee also starting looking because they couldn't remember selling it. They also called the owner but couldn't reach him at the time. We walked around, upstairs and down, talking about it and looking.
They mentioned a pink Fender with tremolo, etc... that was hanging upstairs. I went up and looked at it. It struck me as odd because that model didn't look familiar. It was pink, had the Kahler Spyder whammy, and only said "Fender" on the round part of the black headstock.
One thing led to another and, between the three of us, we figured it out.
(Hold on to your seats, folks.....)
A *former* friend of the owner had borrowed the HM Strat for a while, but only wanted to buy the NECK. They wouldn't do that, so when he brought the guitar back, he had swapped the neck for the neck from a Squier HM. I kid you not. Upon closer inspection, sure enough, the tiny Fender logo on the headstock actually read, "BY Fender." Yep. You guess it. He had somehow removed the "Squier" part from the headstock and left the tiny "by Fender" part.
When I had first looked at it earlier, I noticed that there was about 1/8 inch of overhang where the neck was bolted onto the body. That didn't look like something that Fender would have allowed to leave the factory.
So anyway, they explained to me that this guy had pulled this stunt and that they knew about it, but they didn't realize until we put two and two together that it was the HM Strat I was talking about.
Anyway, a really nice axe has been essentially destroyed and that's a shame.
I mentioned in that thread that a dealer in my area has/had a pink HM Strat with the maple board. This one was NOS from the late 80's and he just doesn't seem to have a market for it. Anyway, I decided to make the trip over there today. They had told me on the phone that they couldn't find it and that it might have sold, but considering how huge and cluttered this store is (Music Outlet in Sevierville, TN), I wanted to be sure. I remember seeing this guitar about 12 years ago in their old location and saw it for the last time a few months ago. It just seemed to be a fixture there for the past several years.
So I went over there, looked around and didn't see it. I asked the employees (awesome folks, by the way), including the guy who had helped me on the phone. After making about three rounds through the store checking out every little nook and cranny, he and another employee also starting looking because they couldn't remember selling it. They also called the owner but couldn't reach him at the time. We walked around, upstairs and down, talking about it and looking.
They mentioned a pink Fender with tremolo, etc... that was hanging upstairs. I went up and looked at it. It struck me as odd because that model didn't look familiar. It was pink, had the Kahler Spyder whammy, and only said "Fender" on the round part of the black headstock.
One thing led to another and, between the three of us, we figured it out.
(Hold on to your seats, folks.....)
A *former* friend of the owner had borrowed the HM Strat for a while, but only wanted to buy the NECK. They wouldn't do that, so when he brought the guitar back, he had swapped the neck for the neck from a Squier HM. I kid you not. Upon closer inspection, sure enough, the tiny Fender logo on the headstock actually read, "BY Fender." Yep. You guess it. He had somehow removed the "Squier" part from the headstock and left the tiny "by Fender" part.
When I had first looked at it earlier, I noticed that there was about 1/8 inch of overhang where the neck was bolted onto the body. That didn't look like something that Fender would have allowed to leave the factory.
So anyway, they explained to me that this guy had pulled this stunt and that they knew about it, but they didn't realize until we put two and two together that it was the HM Strat I was talking about.
Anyway, a really nice axe has been essentially destroyed and that's a shame.
It was the pastel/robin egg blue, but the clear coat yellowed so badly it looked like dirty surgical scrub green. It also had some decent-sized chips in it, so I figured 'why not?' It's one guitar that I have kept while others have come and gone, picked it up around '98-'99.
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