Reviewed by:
Ben Wright, on december 18, 2007
0 of 0 people found this review helpful
Purchased from: eBay
Features: This beautiful guitar was made in 1989 in America. It comes with 22 normal sized frets stretched out along a maple fretboard that has finish of the highest quality. It has a solid top which adds to the heaviness of the whole guitar. The body of the guitar is made of solid Ash and the neck is made of solid maple which again adds to the sheer weight of this guitar. It comes in a Fiesta Red finish coated with lacquer that gives it a beautiful shine. It has a Strat body which is very comfortable to hold and play. The bridge is a Standard Strat bridge. It also has a roller nut at the neck which helps it to stay in tune a great deal and hardly ever needs major tuning. Volume controls include 3 pots which are: volume, tone and tone along with a 5-way selector switch. The pickups are brilliant Fender Lace Sensor pick-ups which contribute greatly to the beautiful sound of the guitar as a whole. The tuners are Fender locking machine heads. When I bought it, it included: an original Fender hardcase. The original Fender Strap. A set of Ernie Ball slinky strings. The original Fender tremelo arm. A Squire practice amplifier. // 10
Sound: It's commonly known as a blues guitar that generates that 'plink' sound. My own music style is rock and metal and it doesn't really achieve that genre of sound. I am currently using a Marshall MG100DFX amplifier along with a bit of chorus that is built into the amplifier, it sounds brilliant. It's never an extremely noisy instrument but I tend to find out that if you leave it switched on with the volume up, it gives a bit of feedback off the bottom E string and A string. The guitar makes the perfect blues, jazz and punk sound but cannot achieve the perfect metal sound. It plays more genres of music well then genres that it doesn't. // 7
Action, Fit & Finish: Seeing as I bought it off eBay, I wouldn't be able to compliment and criticize it due to the action when received from the factory but what I do know is that the person I bought it off only had to tune it a few times seeing as the roller nut helped it to maintain it's tune. The pickups were very well done apart from the fact that the middle pickup was slightly loose. It had a good bookmatched top and a very well routed bridge. The only fault I found with it was that when I received it the middle Lace-sensor pickup was slightly loose but again, this didn't affect the overall sound. // 9
Reliability & Durability: This guitar will definitely withstand Live playing as I have gigged it myself and found no problems at all. The hardware seems of very good quality and in all its years, it hasn't rusted yet. The strap buttons are solid and very reliable. I will always be able to depend on it. I usually take a back-up to a gig anyway but I've never had to use it, therefore I would gig this guitar without a backup. It would take a lot of playing indeed to wear off the quality finish of this guitar, definitely made to last. // 10
Impression: I am a metal player and to be perfectly honest a Fender Stratocaster Plus doesn't achieve that 'crunch' sound and therefore isn't a very good much. On the contrary, if you are a Blues, Jazz, Folk or Punk player then this is the ideal set-up for you. I have currently been playing 1 and a half years and this is a joy to be able to play after so short a period of time. I personally own: 1989 American Fender Stratocaster Plus (this guitar). Tanglewood Strat copy. Marshall MG100DFX Amp. Fender Sidekick Reverb 25 Amplifier. Behrhinger Blues Overdrive Pedal. I should have researched about them a bit more to find out the sounds they were capable of producing. If it were stolen, I would definitely think about investing in one again but I would also like to maybe buy a Gibson Les Paul or Explorer so I could finally attain a good metal sound from my equipment. The thing I love about it is the fact that I can achieve a beautiful clean sound that only a Fender could achieve. However, I do hate how, probably due to the pick-ups, I cannot achieve that heavily distorted sound I would like to achieve. My favorite feature on the Fender has to be the roller nut due to the fact that you don't need to tune it every time you want to play it. I wasn't able to compare this guitar to any others because it's in a world of it's own, truly unique although ESP and various other manufacturers have tried to create replicas but failed to create the perfect Strat sound in my opinion. I do tend to wish it had humbucker pickups so I could get a greater distortion sound although that's probably mean my clean sound will decline in quality and also, if I decided to do it myself, would decrease it's value. // 8
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