All in all a fantastic Strat that gets you darned close to a great vintage Fender.

Of all the Custom Shop Strats in the world, we find that we're consistently taken by the ones that utilize roasted woods - either for the body or neck, or some combination thereof.

This really beautiful 1965 Strat features a roasted, quarter sawn Maple neck paired to a non-roasted 2 piece Alder body. The result is a really lively, resonant, and loud guitar when played without the aid of an amp. This always points to good things regarding what we expect to hear when we do sit down to plug in.

Bound Strat fingerboards can be controversial in the guitar community, but we really dig it. Why? Honestly, it just looks cool, nothing more. You see bound boards appear in the Fender lineup in 1965, so there's historical precedent. The now discontinued rosewood board Eric Johnson Strats also featured neck binding if that matters to you.

Ok, enough about neck binding - how is this guitar playability-wise and tonally? In a word, awesome. The satin feeling roasted maple neck combined with a 9 1/2" radius, '65 C profile (.82-.974"), and 6105 frets plays beautifully. This is a great in-between carve - not too thin, not too chunky. For us, it's ideal and suitable for a wide range of styles and players.

Plugged in we were greeted to classic Fender twang and chime. The bridge pickup has a Tele-like bite (in a great way), while the 2 and 4 positions offer up musical cluck and compression. The neck position does the scooped midrange thing nicely but isn't the glassiest neck pickup we've ever heard, so if you're looking for SRV tones, you might have to nudge the treble on your amp a smidge (you can get there though).