So this is my review that I promised you, about the Custom Player 60s strat:
The first thing that I noticed, even before I took it out of the box, was it’s light weight! I haven’t weight it yet, but it’s surely lighter than all my other strats and teles…
When I took it out of the box, I instantly fell in love with the wonderful “pale sonic blue” color. It’s a special color that varies, depended on the light of the room. Under the day light or strong light in general, it looks very pale (sometimes it looks as white too):
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f283/elavd/classic player 60s/DSC03020.jpg
While darker blue in dark light:
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f283/elavd/classic player 60s/DSC03027.jpg
The color contrast of the sonic blue, the mint green pickguard and the aged plastic parts is wonderful!!! The guitar looks as an old guitar forgoten for a long long time unplayed…
The neck is not fat at all (as many people claim)…It is a VERY comfortable C-shaped neck, not very thin and not very fat. It fits perfectly in my hand! It reminded me the neck of my Rockinger strat replica.
It is very well finished, with nice wood grain on the back side (it doesn’t have the black stripe) and very well placed medium jumbo frets:
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f283/elavd/classic player 60s/DSC03039.jpg
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f283/elavd/classic player 60s/DSC03050.jpg
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f283/elavd/classic player 60s/DSC03051.jpg
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f283/elavd/classic player 60s/DSC03053.jpg
The medium jumbo frets combined with the 12” radius, make the string bending a “piece of cake”
I would like to mention some things about the neck:
1) The guitar came with AWFUL Fender strings (10s) and a relatively high action. I changed the strings to 9s and the playability and sound of the guitar improved dramatically!
2) The rosewood fingerboard felt a bit dry on my hands in comparison the Rockinger strat. I used some lemon oil on it which had a good effect on the wood. I think that my (constantly) sweaty hands will take care of this dryness…
3) There is a red sticker on the pickguard writting: “9.5 radius”. This is probably Fender’s error when they printed those stickers. They printed too many stickers, and it would be a waste of money not to use them. The radius (as many people have measured) is DEFINITELY 12”.
Also, the neck wasn’t 100% straight. It had a small curve near the 12th fret, so I had to unscrew it in order to fix it.
Also one of the neck plate screws, wasn’t screwed all the way down:
Not such a big deal, but I had to mention it to…
(The neck plate’s "Custom Shop Designed" logo, increases the... mojo of the guitar…)
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f283/elavd/classic player 60s/DSC03043.jpg
All the strats that I have or had in the past had 6-point tremolo. The hybrid 2-point of this guitar was a pleasant surprise for me! It gives you precision to your playing when you use the (relatively small tremolo arm), while retaining the vintage sound of a 6-point one:
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f283/elavd/classic player 60s/DSC03060.jpg
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f283/elavd/classic player 60s/DSC03030.jpg
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f283/elavd/classic player 60s/DSC03059.jpg
The tremolo block is
not steel. I tried to stick a little magnet on it and I failed. Despite of that, it’s a full sized block, like the ones Fender used on the first Stratocasters in the 50s & 60s, and I think that the fact the it’s not made of steel, doesn’t affect the sound.
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f283/elavd/classic player 60s/DSC03063.jpg
One more detail that I found:
When I took the back plate off, I saw that a little piece of the finish under the tremolo springs had chipped off:
I took it off in order to see how much skinny or not the finish is (I used a 1 Euro coin as a comparison):
So now, let’s talk about the SOUND!
I was
amazed by the resonance of the guitar played unplugged. Probably it’s light weight is helping for that too…
Although I have been skeptical about the sound of the Custom Shop 69 pickups because I had them in the past in a strat that I sold, I was again pleasantly surprised!
I liked VERY much the sound of these pickups!!! I don’t know it’s in my mind, but I think that these pickups sounded a lot worse in the strat that I used to have…
Although they have a pretty low output (I prefer it, in order to have great clean sound), they have a bit of aggressive attitude. I think that the high frequencies are a bit boosted (without being harsh) and this fact gives them a “high-end” sound, a little “air” and a more definition in their sound.
I lowered a bit the bass sound of the 3 pickups, in order to control the bass more, and have a more acoustic clean strat sound…
This set has the classic “wooden” strat sound that we all love…
But I have to mention 3 things:
1) The middle pickup is not RWRP and so the 2 positions are not hum canceling.
2) In those positions (2 & 4) there is a noticeable volume drop, probably due non-RWRP middle pickup. Despite that I LOVE those 2 positions!!! (Especially the bridge+middle one)
3) The 2 E strings are not centered relatively to the poles of the neck pickup. I din’t notice any side effect of that in the sound. It’s mainly a visual comment…
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f283/elavd/classic player 60s/DSC03056.jpg
As a conclusion I would say that, this guitar has indeed the sound, mojo, vibe and character of a vintage 60s strat, but with more modern specs. I strongly believe that it
IS NOT inferior to a (unreasonably high priced) 62ri strat.
R
