STAR LETTER
STRAT’S THE WAY
After 20-odd years of playing guitar, this year has provided the biggest surprise in that I have finally found a Strat I get on with. I was a late starter at 45 and, as a humbucker fan, my little collection is almost all humbucker-equipped, although there is a P-90 in one of Chris George’s beautiful creations. At various times through the last 22 years I have thought, ‘I need a Strat,’ but all attempts – Fender, Suhr, Music Man, even a custom build – have resulted in me moving them on as I simply could not get on with them. I never got on with the extra tension of the longer scale and had also decided that I didn’t like maple ’boards, the big Fender headstock, vintage-radius ’boards, or a single-coil bridge pickup.
Anyhow, I recently decided to trade my lovely old Eggle Vienna because, at 10lbs-plus, I was just never picking it up. So it was time for another Strat experiment. A guy offered me a deal involving a Japanese FSR Strat, 7.25-inch radius maple ’board, big headstock… But what the heck, I did the trade. As soon as I plugged it in at home I was shocked
