Prism said:
I'll trust that even a used Strat will stand the test of time? 'Cause my heart is set on owning a good ol' Fender.
I've been buying and selling quality guitars - 95%-plus Fenders and Gibsons - off and on for over thirty years and playing for forty, so what I say may have some authority. I don't have any romantic or emotional issues about axes: They're just hardware and investment stock, nothing more...ever. I have my personal preferences like everyone else, but for me it's always about the bottom line: How does it play, sound and (above all) resell?
Be warned, if you have a bunch of poetic and emotional involvement in guitars and view them as holy objects you'll always be pissed off by what I say, so you can leave now and save yourself some elevated blood pressure.
My take is that Strats are not all that. Fenders are basically cheap, primitive, first-generation guitars that got expensive. They don't even have the set necks that one would reasonably expect in a $200 import and the workmanship is inconsistent and rarely as good as on some Indonesian cheapy. I've never really cared for them. My current personal Strat is a near-mint, 100%-original, two-owner L-Series currently appraised at $10K-$12K:
http://www.netcolony.com/image.cgi?url=/arts/epizeuxis/strat1.jpg
(Those are greasy pawprints, not scratches!)
My take is that it was a decent value at the $100 I paid for it in 1971, but it's not much of a guitar, _qua_ guitar. Not then, not now, not _ever_. It makes some neat noises once you struggle to get the pickups adjusted where they work at all - and these pickups are the bitches of all time to get right - and it plays so-so, but it's just a cheap guitar. Same for every Strat I ever played. If it wasn't for the accident of the mid-position switch pickup phase thing, I really wonder what would have become of the Strat.
To make matters worse, Mexican Strats are sandbagged right out of the gate: Fender supplies them with pickups that are inferior to
the real Strat pickups and otherwise stack the deck so that however crappy US Fenders are, they'll always be better than the best Mexican Strat.
Modifying or "upgrading" guitars is anathema to me as a former dealer-collector. It's always good money after bad come resale time and by the time you get a Mexican Strat "upgraded" to US Strat sound, you've dropped about as much money (which you'll never get back) as you would have to have gotten a very nice used US Strat, which is my suggestion. Shop hard and ruthlessly. Buy a good original axe cheap and leave it alone except to play it. Don't screw it up by "upgrading" it.
Still, for all this, I have a Strat myself and play it once in a while. I also have a 2000 American Standard Telecaster I bought new a few months ago for $429 w/case, because it was a deal and I thought I needed a Telecaster after not having one for a few decades. It's OK, though by no means a great example of the luthier's art.
It's sort of expected of a pro musician that he have some recognized classic axes in the toolbox, and I certainly do, but the guitars I _play_ are new imports like the top-of-the-line DeArmonds. No cachet, but as guitars they're superior to any of my Fenders or Gibsons.
