COLE'S '65 REISSUE FENDER STRATOCASTER
 
As you can tell by the picture, this guitar has been to hell and back! This is my favorite most used strat in my collection a '65 re-issue strat I picked up a number of years ago. I played it stock for many years but it slowly morphed into what it has become today, a composite guitar. The original factory neck was very nice, but the fretboard radius true to the era was 7.5" and I needed a larger radiused fretboard to accomodate my playing style and set up.

I took a '72 reissue Japanese Fender strat I retired and bolted on the shallow C profiled neck. It features a re-radiused 12" rosewood fretboard with Jim Dunlop's largest wire... dig in and pull baby!

The smartest single thing I did on this guitar was to pull the anemic sounding stock pickups out and have Lindy Fralin rewind those pathetic puppies to his standard Blues Special specs. It's about 5% hotter. Lindy's pickups and services are so impressive, I have become a fan for life!.

Electronically, my biggest complaint about Fender guitars is that they wire all lefthanded guitars righthanded. The first thing I do to all my Fenders is have them rewired lefty. With that said, I also break away from standard wiring and switched over to the Eric Johnson school of thought. I use a 5 way switch, 1 volume, 1st tone works the neck pickup only, 2nd tone works the rear pickup only. The middle pickup has no tone wired to it at all.

The other plus about the rewire is that all of a sudden the rear pick up becomes more useful and versital. By just rolling off the rear pickups tone knob you can go from a crunchy rhythm tone to solo mode with a slight increase of db to boot. The middle pickup sounds absolutely crystal clear as it should be! I could only have one strat... this be the one!

  '65 REISSUE STRATOCASTER SPEC'S:

  • Alder Body with Stock Candy Apple Red Paint.
  • Maple Neck with Rosewood Fingerboard.
  • 12" Radius Super Jumbo Frets.
  • Stock Era Bridge Flat on the Body.
  • 4 Spring @ Full Tension Gotoh tuners.
  • Stock Pickups Rewound (5% over) by Lindy Fralin.
  • Schaller Straplocks.

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