Swirled Strat

I recently played this. It's a Standard HSS Mexican Strat, given a swirled finish. We all know too well how the Strat is renowned for its single coil tone but the humbucker in this one was below the mark. It sorely lacks bottom end. You'd argue that Strats were not meant to manifest whatever thumping lower frequencies heard in other guitars; they were carefully crafted to move away from that sonic territory. That might be a valid perspective but once a humbucker is inserted into any guitar, the reasonable objective is to fuse the guitar's inherent resonance with the said pickup for that specific chemistry. If it fails then it fails, we shouldn't try too hard to remediate our hearing. 

This particular Strat, ladies & gentlemen, is a splendid single coil player. The issue, tone-wise, is the humbucker which hardly has adequate bottom end for metal-type punchiness. We could all replace that default unit with some other make that specializes in this tone type & I reckon it's a wise move. If you are interested in this Fender, it's available at Swee Lee (List: $899).

Swirl it

Not too long ago, Fender dabbled in art- guitar body art, that is. The Standard series Strat has a splatter-type design on the body & this was a limited run. 

This year, the artistic dabbling returns; it's now a swirl body. If you are an Ibanez JEM fan, this isn't new.

Flood anniversary

The month of May is looming ahead. If you work for Gibson, you'd probably be overwhelmed by the Nashville flood flashbacks; the death of so many Gibson guitars is simply too much. But on the contrary, Gibson had made it a point to remember the flood by having the Flood Anniversary LP Studio (available in green or blue swirl) whose swirl design was actually the product of the flood water mixing with the factory paint & left to dry as the water receded. Gibson fans are debating over the USD2,389 MSRP in the mean time.

Swirl

The delivery date for Gibson's new Firebird X is a little delayed; even the count-down counter over at the manufacturer's website had been removed. The team did some other touches to these guitars before releasing them to the public... soon. 

The finish you see there was inspired by the recent flood at the Gibson plant where receding water left a swirl-like pattern on the floor, the above pic is an example.

We wonder if the (Ibanez) JEM swirl drew inspiration from a certain spillage of sorts. Maybe someone bumped over a bowl of miso soup at the drawing board...