COLE'S '78 FENDER STRATOCASTER        IT'S THE ONE WE USED FOR THE MENU AT LEFT        OKAY?                FINE.
 
Another favorite strat of mine I picked up a number of years back, this guitar is set up specifically as my main electric bottleneck slide guitar for open tuning. I got it from a righthanded heavy metal kid that just discovered Jimi Hendrix. Fortunately I got the guitar from him before he drilled a hole into the lower horn for a strap button! He thought it would be cool to have an upside down and backwards guitar like Jimi... but when I shared the downside about doing that he was ready to give it up. "Gimme that damn thing boy!"... I sez to myself!

By the way, this guitar came with a lefthanded case, which Fender no longer offers, bummer that it's no longer a consideration. Now when I take my guitar out of a case I have to flip it over. After I traded off my righthanded snakeskin Fender practice amp to the young lad, I went home and took this baby apart. The swamp ash body is very light and has excellent grain. I stripped the clear factory finish off and put on a 3 color sunburst with nitro lacquer.

In 1978, Fender was well into what I call their crappy guitar making period. For the most part, this guitar seemed to escape some of the "crapiness", but it's a sloppy fit in the neck pocket makes it less than perfect. Compounding the problem is the 3 bolt neck design. On a bad night, I can make the neck move laterally if I wank on it hard enough. So you just have to tighten the bolts down every oil change and call it a day.

The neck is what I call "era aligned"... in other words the neck pocket is slightly off axis and the string to neck edge space for the two outside E strings don't enjoy the same measurements on the last fret. Somehow it seems to work & sound good so I made it okay. My favorite aspect about this guitar is the big fat C shaped neck profile. It fills your hand but is excellent for holding up under the tension of .013 to .059 set of strings!

  '78 STRATOCASTER SPEC'S:

  • Swamp Ash Body—3 Color Sunburst Body.
  • Maple Neck with Rosewood, 12" Radius Fretboard, Large Frets.
  • Lindy Fralin Pickups with Warmoth Tortoise Shell Pickguard.
  • Bridge Lays Flat to the Body with 5 Coil Springs at Full Tension.
  • Sperzel Locking Tuners.
  • Schaller Strap Locks.
  • Eric Johnson Strat Wiring with 5 Position Switch.

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