My guitar is a Fender Stratocaster Custom Shop remake of the 56' Stratocaster. The guitar is nicknamed the Mary Kaey (I think that spelling is right, I could be wrong). I put this under the '57 Strat section because there was no better place for it. I hope epinions will finally make a section for it. Anyway, here goes.

I first bought the guitar about a year ago brand new from a local guitar shop. It caught my eye with its cream white color (absolutely beautiful), its gold hardware, birds eye maple wood (if you haven't ever seen it, it is a very fine maple wood with little white spots which sorta do look like birds eyes). I took the guitar into the amp room and played it, then finally later looked at the 2000 (list about 3500) dollar price tag. But there was something about the guitar that grabbed me.

First off, one of my favorite parts of the guitar is the neck. As I said, it is made out of birds eye maple. This is a very durable wood, and it is also very good looking. The shape of the neck is the best though. Unlike other Strats, this neck is shaped in a "pyramid" shape. I took a very strong liking to this neck, because it eventually makes bar chords, contort-o-chords, and string bending much easier, smoother, and with faster transitions. But the bad part is the wood used to get bows VERY easily. And unlike modern Strats, the screw for the truss rod is not at the top of the neck, it is at the base of the neck. This means you litterally have to take the neck off and put it back on. But it is a darn good thing that the rod has totally stablized. Besides that, the neck is great!

A strange part of the neck is the hardware. Unlike the modern ways of string winding which uses the hole and peg, this has a peg with a large slit and hole in the top of the peg. Truthfully i like it a lot better because it gives mostly the same hold, but with a little more ease. Sometimes the high E string is a little hard to keep in place while first winding, but it isn't a big deal.

The body of the guitar is nothing out of the ordinary besides the color and hardware. The white cream color is one of the most beautiful I've ever seen, if you like those lighter colors. The pick guard is white is well, but pure white. Good color combination, especially with the gold hardware.

The guitar offers 3 standard pickups called American Standards. I believe they are a vintage type though, but i could be wrong. They seem to handle distortion better than other Strats, but still not as good as those humbuckers. If you are looking to play hard, heavy music you probably should get humbucker pickups, which can be changed out of this guitar with a new pickguard and some fancy wiring. But for good clean play, you can't get much better than this. This is one of the brightest tones you will ever hear, but can also go very crisp and very LOUD!

Another vintage problem with the guitar is the three position pickup selector. Most modern guitars are equiped with a 5 position selector for treble/middle and middle/bass tones. Fender includes a free five position switch with the guitar, but it isn't exactly fun to install. You have to take the guitar apart, get some fun welding tools, do some extraction and insertion and praying and just hope you didn't wreck it. Taking it to a guitar shop might be a good bet.

The action is at a very good height. Truthfully I am not going to measure it and I don't remember the number off the top of my head, but it is the same as most Strats. It is a little high, but i really like my action a little high and truthfully I think it works amazingly well for this guitar.

You can play this guitar for almost any occasion. If you are a Limp Bizkit cover band, I'd stay away from this guitar cause it is probably too good for you anyway. It won't give you the kind of sound you want either. But for almost every other type of playing, this one is awesome. It is easily a gig guitar, and it might even be one you wouldn't wanna take to a gig cause you don't want it to get hurt.

I play the guitar through a Crate GFX amp, which isn't the most amazing amp ever. But the sound still sounds great, and after buying a Line 6 POD 2.0 (an amp modeler, great buy) it sounds even better.

All in all, this is the coolest electric I have ever owned, but every guitar players know preference is the key. If you don't like the feel, then you won't like the guitar. Gibsons are some of the best guitars ever made, but I don't like the feel of them and will therefore never own one. And many feel the same way about Fender.

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