Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster 1962 HREL HSS MB Greg Fessler

Even Greg Fessler is not spared from the increasing demand for Fender's MasterBuilt guitars and so we waited 28 months for the model shown here! Was the long wait worth it? Make up your own mind!
The aging shows the typical Fessler characteristics with a fantastic crackling of the nitro lacquer and noticeable furrows in the alder body on the right places. This looks and feels like a tool that has been played very long and intensively! The pickguard, pots and the PU caps are not exempt from this artful aging process and fit harmoniously into the overall picture. The finish of the neck was more "well rehearsed" than "worn & dirty" - smooth, supple and still with enough varnish on the Rift Sawn Maple. Otherwise, this neck has all the features we love: a great "60 Style Oval C" profile, a 12" radius that makes string bending a pleasure, the Narrow Tall/6105 frets and a dark ("sorted for dark") Round-Lam rosewood fingerboard. Another popular feature is the headstock with staggered tuner and no string trees, which results in an amazing improvement in tuning stability when using the tremolo.

The first thing you notice about the sound of this Strat is the amazing sustain: the tone stays very long and evenly in all positions, stands stable and immediately puts a smile on the player's face - you don't hear something like that every day with a Strat ! The rest of the sound behavior is best described as crisp, pearly and fun.
How do you get such a tone adequately transformed to the amp? Here with a handwound FAT60's single coil in the neck position, the same model (reverse wound) in the middle and one of the best PAF clones ever at the bridge. The Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates literally grabs the raw sound of this Strat and fires it out of the speaker with merciless dynamics and openness. Just Great !