jimistone
long standing member
i'm a fender player. my '66 strat needs a fretjob so i decided to shop for a new one...i went to a store that had american strats and mex strats and played all of them...there ain't a dimes worth of difference in them. Pickups and finish are the main difference. A white mex strat with a maple fretbord played better than anything in the store and thats the one i bought. Im VERY hard on a guitar and the mex strat takes a lickin' and keeps on ticking. i started to change pickups but when i got ready to get a set i compared the mex strat to one that had "noiseless" pickups (they don't have the classic fender bite and bell like tone...cause they're humbuckers)....to a strat that had "lace sensers" (too much compression for me)....and to a strat that had "texas specials" (best sounding pickups...but i already have a set of those on my '66). Bottom line is that the pickups on the mex strats sound damn good if you like that classic fender sound (hum included) output isn't as much of a concern for me as tone. How can you beat a fender strat for less that 400 bucks?....can't do it.