The Mike Reynolds’ Signature Fender Strat Ha ha.

Ok.  This is it.  It’s finally how I dreamed it could be.  There might be a little change or two here or there, but check it out.

This is the 2010 MIM Fender Standard Strat. 

Here are the details:

The Neck.  It is a 9.5 Radius rosewood neck with medium/jumbo frets.  The neck originally had a glossy poly finish that we stripped off with sandpaper and steel wool.  You can see on the back of the neck that this discolored it a bit, which looks pretty cool, but more importantly it feels like the smoothest Matte Satin finish rather than the Poly glossy feel.

The Body is Alder.  It took hours to strip the poly off of the body carefully.  In the places where we got it down to bare wood, we relic’d and sanded to make it look somewhat natural. 

The Pickguard is a Shielded Fender Pickguard

The pots and switch are stock from the MIM.

The Bridge has American Style Saddles that are Stainless which increases sustain.

The tremolo comes stock with a larger trem block that has a loud resonating sustain to it.

The Pickups are the Seymour Duncan Everything Axe Strat Set.  This includes a Jeff Beck Jr. single coil sized humbucker in the bridge.  A Duckbucker in the Middle. and a Lil ‘59 single coil sized humbucker in the neck. 

The Jeff Beck is a hot and gritty pickup that sounds strong and ballsy through a tube amp.  I love this sound for heavy blues.  Through the right amp, this will also deliver a King’s X type of Crunchy tone.  It makes blues sound the way I like them, heavy, dirty and thick.

The Duckbucker is a super quacky sounding pickup.  Just full of character and tone.  It is a new type of sound for me, but I love playing around with it.

The Lil ‘59 is a smoother high powered singing pickup.  I feel like it is the perfect combination with the Beck.  So, if you are playing a crunchy bluesy rhythm, you can shift up to this pickup for a singing solo or lead riff.

I have light elixir Nanoweb strings on it because of their ringing thick sustain. 

I love this guitar!  It feels amazing no poly or nitro gloss on it, just a flat matte satin feel.  It sounds just like I want it to, heavy blues!  I think it looks super cool, but that beauty is in my eye since I am the beholder.