For at least two years, I've been hinting that I was working on the ultimate Strat project. Now that the guitar is a thing of the real world, 99% done, and beautifully playable, the story can be told.
(Caveat: I realize "ultimate Strat" is a subjective concept, and your idea and mine may differ. But even allowing for all THAT, this guitar certainly seems an ultimate SOMEthing!)
I'd like to say the idea was 100% my own, but I can't.
As with so many things in the lives of those who hang out here, the Iconoclaster had its inspiration in the fertile commercial imaginations and suggestive marketing power of the musical instrument juggernaut which is FMIC.
In 2001, their Frontline catalog featured what looked like a chrome-bodied Strat on the cover, stark and seductive on a plain black background. As far as I could find, nothing inside the catalog related to the cover, but the hook had been set.
Born as part of America's crazy explosion of shape, color, and chrome in the 1950s, the Strat is as much sculptural as functional, as pure an expression of futurism as ever escaped into the real world. In my view, for all the attempts, no one has ever improved on its grace – or come up with a guitar shape at once so unlikely and so obviously right. Certainly no other radical guitar design, owing so little to tradition, has had the Strat's staying power.
If the utilitarian Tele was all about stringent form-following-function, a neat-and-tidy almost-minimalist way of turning the guitar into a truly electric instrument, the sensual Strat was all about leaping decades or centuries into the future. Both were the product of rare genius, but I wonder if Leo got into the mescal between designing them.
More likely, after being the first to bolt together the quintessentially functional solidbody electric, he was also the first to grasp that the SHAPE of such an instrument was no longer bound by construction requirements. It need not honor tradition; it could follow the designer's aesthetic whim, subject only to his eye and taste.
In 1954, cars emerged from Harley Earl's GM design studios with curves and chrome unlike mere mortals had ever imagined. The Strat was of a piece with this jet-age design orgy in the culture at large. It looked like something Dali might have painted into the arms of a voluptuous surrealistic player as she floated over luminous alien seas. Sonically, it was equally Martian, with three pickups and a vibrato system secreted away in the body capable of turning notes into melting elastic swirl.
The Tele was trim, prim, businesslike, and button-up – for all its innovation a logical progression from where Leo had started. The Strat was pure exuberant excess, a fascinating exercise in almost abstract design. It WAS Leo, however, so form still followed function – and the Strat's comfort and both ergonomic and technical logic have been proven millions of times over.
In 1954, of course, few knew what to make of the instrument, and it took years for musicians to catch up. Buddy Holly provided an early demonstration of its capability, and Hank Marvin and any number of surfers brought it out front. But it took Hendrix, 12 years after its introduction, to live up to the innovation and weirdness the instrument promised.
Still, it was well into the 70s before the Strat began to take on the iconic stature it now enjoys (and which FMIC skillfully promotes and exploits). By this point the Strat's ubiquity is enough to put some of us off. It's become the default electic guitar. There have been too many versions, made by too many people, at too many price points, over too many years. Strats are practically inVISible to us now, and lots of us think we're tired of it.
It's odd, but I've never been a Strat guy. In the mid-60s, when I was bonding with guitars, it was Jazzmasters and Jaguars which attracted me. Hendrix was Strat, and I knew that, but he didn't make me want one. Ritchie Blackmore, Buddy Guy, Ry Cooder, the traitorous Clapton (and Beck, for that matter), David Gilmour, Mark Knopfler, SRV, so many others who have touched and influenced me - all Strats, but I never caught the bug. Couldn't find my way around the guitar for some reason.
In the 80s and through the 90s, I played guitars capable of convincing Stratlike voices (especially positions 2 & 4), and they became an essential part of my tonal vocabulary, but the Strat itself always eluded me. When I had the opportunity while working at a music store in the 80s, after the shaky rebirth of Fender in Corona, I bought an '82 1962 Reissue. Classic sunburst, of course. It's a good-un and I still have it – but it didn't become a mainstay in my arsenal, nor did it lead to ongoing Strat fever. I knew that between that and the Strat voices in other guitars, I had the Strat thing covered.
But when I saw that chrome Strat, it all fell into place. What could be more appropriate than a chrome Strat? It would be the archetypal apotheosis of all things Stratocaster. It would be chromatically free; the shape could escape the confines of any limiting color scheme. That shape had never had any business being made out of wood in the first place (plastic, maybe!); in metal it would be entirely a thing of the machine age, a fantasy in pure reflectivity.
But there WERE no chrome Strats, not really. I did the research and learned that Fender had made some aluminum Strats in the 90s, most notably the Harley Davidson models (with the Harley logo emblazoned across the body) - but also some anodized models in a variety of colors. (What's the point of a metal guitar if it doesn't LOOK like metal, I wondered? The Dopyera brothers knew better than THAT, back before guitars were even electrified.)
So the whim remained an aesthetic whim. But ever after when I saw a Strat, I stripped it naked in my mind, down to its essential mercury armature.
Then, while obsessing over metal-bodied electric resonators several years ago, I came across a fellow selling polished aluminum Strat bodies. Hollow aluminum Strat bodies. The price was right; I bought one, and the determination was born.
I'd seen others' chromey/shiny Strats and Teles, the Zemaiti and the Kramers and the Beans. Always they'd stopped short of the concept - including Fender. If the neck was aluminum, the body was wood. If the body was metal, the neck was wood. Or it looked chrome but was plated wood.
All flash, no commitment.
Playing resonators, I'd become a great fan of the musical qualities of hollow metal bodies, and knew that some early resos had hollow necks as well – but in truth, none of that mattered. I HOPED my completed guitar would sound good, but the main point was that it LOOK good. Shiny silver metal and more shiny silver metal. Nothing ANYwhere but shiny silver metal.
This project would admit no compromises.
Soon enough I came across a guy who built aluminum replacement necks for Beans and Kramers. We e-corresponded. He did Strat necks, sure – I'm not the only one who appreciates the tonal qualities of metal – but before we could flesh out the details, he disappeared. Dropped out of sight, no response to email.
An old family friend is a superb sculptor and automotive machinist, and he expressed interest – but I would have to send him a sample neck. The relief and the frets would have to be just right, the radius and the profile, and it would have to be mounted on the guitar so that he, never having built a guitar neck, could assess all that stuff under proper functional stress.
Before I could decide on all the parameters and order a wood neck as a model, the first neck-builder reappeared. We talked (always via email) and I placed the order: I wanted an all-shiny Strat neck with the proper small headstock, medium jumbo-ish frets, polished fingerboard, and polished back. And I wanted it to be HOLLOW.
Well, the body was hollow (and doesn't show a seam, don't ask me how they do it). Why not the neck?
This was early this year.
In the meantime, I had been deciding about other hardware and the electronics. While the visual concept has never wavered (shiny-shiny-shiny), the functional intention has evolved. Early on, I'd wanted it to look like a Strat dipped in chrome – and to sound classically Stratty. Standard Strat pickups, bridge, tuners, etc. During that time I got one of Fender's chrome-plated Strat guards, intending to drop Kinmans in it.
But Greg Kinman will NOT supply chromed plastic covers (and certainly not polished metal covers) for his pickups, maintaining that they ruin the tone. Who cared! This was about the LOOKS, man!
Over time, I adjusted my thinking and ordered a pair of chrome English-mount TV Powertrons and a Lace Chrome Dome for the middle, along with a new guard to accommodate them – polished aluminum to match the guitar. That, along with a back cover plate, was shipped to our man ADR well over a month ago for the wildly convoluted wiring scheme I'd devised. As far as I know, it's still hung up at Canadian customs.
(The post office is absolutely useless in tracking international packages, unless they are insured - something the vendor/shipper doesn't do. He also refuses to accommodate me by making another plate at a reduced price so we can both share the pain. There will be no need to order from him again.)
By this time I had the guitar back from the neck builder, who had bolted it together and put on the tuners. His work was jaw-dropping. Incredibly smooth craftsmanship, beautiful surfaces and transitions, all under the near-chrome gleam of his polish job.
I wanted to HEAR it, and I wanted to take it to the Roundup. So I was back to the chrome pickguard I already had...and the most obvious possible choice for pickups, Lace Alumitones. I mean, after all! They're MADE of aluminum and they work on voodoo rather than electronics. They were dutifully ordered.
The guitar finally came together last week, at Roadworthy Guitars in Bloomington, IN, where the owner and head guru Dave Baas shaped the pickup holes in the chrome guard for the Alumitones (they're square on the ends, not rounded), wired to my specs, mounted the trem and knobs, strung it up, and adjusted the bridge and intonation.
I first saw the complete guitar when my son brought it to the Roundup last Friday. I was pleased, and showed it around some at the event, but I didn't really get to know the guitar till I spent some quality time this past week. It needed some polish (Mothers, of course, over the naked aluminum) to look its best.
Then I played it.
And I have to say...good LORD. It may just be me (it isn't), but this is one amazing, remarkable instrument. I didn't CARE how it sounded, remember – I knew it would be interesting, even if it was strange and/or uncontrollably squawky. But if anything, it sounds better than it looks.
Unamplified, there's a swirling body resonance that sounds deeper and further away than the body should be capable of, a kind of natural reverb. I've often heard the old saw about how you can feel a guitar resonating against your chest, but I've never felt it as strongly as with this guitar.
It doesn't so much sustain (well, OK, it does), as it RINGS. Chime? This thing is Big Ben. Strum across the strings above the nut, where a guitar usually makes a short dry plink, and this thing rings for 8 - 10 seconds like a harp.
Notes leap off the neck like they're on springs. Words like "unimpeded," "open," and "aliiiiiive" come to mind.
Then you plug it in, and the difference between this and other guitars is NOT subtle. The Alumitones are ultra-low impedance (2.6k!) and use technology I don't begin to understand. (Jeff Lace explains it here.)
What I DO know is that they're ULTRA-hi-fi, with frequency response from subsonic to bat-tweet. I'm confident they bring out anything this body-neck combination produces. Did I mention they're noiseless? Not "noiseless," like noiseless Strat pickups, but NOISELESS. Hum-free, static-free, like a noise floor somewhere in the sub-basement. The dynamic range is vast.
The guitar produces rich harmonic content that you can clearly hear; octaves, 5ths, and higher order intervals open up like drawbars above fundamentals, and they're surprisingly easy to milk. There's a throaty wide-open twang in the low end. Perhaps counter-intuitively, the high end is not brittle or strident. No ice picks here.
It's just transparent clarity from end to end; but unlike metal necks on wood bodies, it's not harsh or cold - and there's nothing to damp the resonance of the metal as on metalbody-woodneck guitars.
I say this without having spent quality time with a Trussart, or the Fender aluminum-bodied guitars, so take it for what it's worth. But this is a far different experience than a Kramer or Bean. Those sound and feel bright, sharp, and heavy, like hammers on anvils. This is airy and blossomy, more like light through the superstructure of an airship.
I played it for a day clean before I hooked up any dirt, spending ample time with every pickup combo. All are recognizably Strat-o-phonic, but with the added dimension and response described.
When I stepped on the dirt, I lost a few more hours. Even the bridge pickup has plenty of meat, and the neck pickup has a fat soaring vowel-like tone. The middle pickup has an ideal mix of shronk and bite. In all settings, high-definition clarity is maintained, still without the thin knifey effect you might expect.
The tone control is smooth and effective, with a gradual rolloff down to very dark.
How does it feel? Feels fine. I suspect the radius is a bit flatter than 12" (though the builder was shooting for 12), and it takes about 3 minutes to get used to having metal under your fingers and against your palms. But it quickly feels perfectly natural. The action is superb, and there's certainly no truss rod to have to mess with, so it will stay there.
Now, Pappy says it feels like a pipe and weighs a ton, but he's a mere wisp of a guy and is exaggerating. The neck is a touch heavier than the body, but the guitar balances well and is not what anyone would call neck-heavy. I haven't weighed it yet, but I'd guess it around 10 pounds. Not the featherweight I was hoping for (the neck is more chambered than hollow), but within reason.
Response is extraordinarily even across every string and fret. To say there are "no dead spots" puts it mildly. The whole guitar just wants to sing at a touch.
The Hipshot vibrato is smooth and creamy, and returns to pitch accurately through the aluminum nut. (Of course.) Arm tension can be set via an allen screw in the block, so it doesn't fall away when you let go.
The specs.
• Seamless hollow aluminum body with internal support struts
• 25.5" scale, chambered aluminum neck
• aluminum fingerboard and nut
• medium-jumbo nickel-silver frets
• black phenolic fret markers and recessed side markers
• neck attached with hardened steel allen bolts
• Hipshot full-floating 2-point tremolo on hardened steel studs
• Gotoh Mini 510 Locking Tuners
• Lace Alumitone pickups
• 5-way switch with push-pull tone control to activate bridge pickup, providing all 7 possible pickup combinations (including neck & bridge and all three on).
This began as a conceptual project. The sculptural aspects of the Strat body were of primary interest. After seeing the "chrome Strat" on the catalog cover, I suspected that no color had ever done the Strat shape justice; after seeing this guitar from every angle and under various lights, I'm sure of it. Any color you spray on a Strat brings out a certain personality, perhaps, but it limits it as well.
The strict silver metallic palette enhances and exploits the organic flow of mysteriously interacting curves, masses, and lines inherent in Leo's design. Light has a hard time finding traction on these surfaces, but as it slips around it takes you on a fascinating trip.
The guitar is severely monochrome, but in its reflectivity it picks up everything around it and becomes riotously polychrome. I'm pleased with the subtle variation of texture as well between the soft burnished gleam of the aluminum, the brushed surfaces of the pickups, the hard chrome of the pickguard, tuners, and bridge plate.
I built it for looks, hoping for something that suggested spilled mercury. That it succeeds just as well in sound is a completely satisfying bonus.
I'll take it!
Sound samples coming...sometime.
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