El Straticastor Mexicano

No actual photographic record of mine exists.

But his one is identical, I believe. (Aren't they all?)
I love guitars, more than a non-guitarist should. Eventually, though I remind myself that I don't really play that well and I sell them to get something else. But the allure remains.

Oh, to own an "American" Strat! That would be a sweet thing.

Guitars, guitars, guitars... Let's see: There was a white Univox strat style guitar on semi-permanent loan in the 1980s, a few junky acoustics, a black Chinese-made Strat, an Ovation acoustic-electric with the plastic bowl back, both in the 90s, a Washburn acoustic, my beautiful "garbage guitar," the Cortley Gibson Humingbird clone, and a $200 Fernandez exact clone of a '58 Sunburst Strat.

And then there was the one that looked what you see to the left.

The gunmetal strat was Mexican, or assembled in Mexico and sported a techy-0ut fine sparkle-gray finish. And yes, it was Mexican, but I couldn't tell the difference between it and the American ones that cost 10 times more. I sounded pretty much the same on all of them, and I couldn't justify the cost of an "American" model. So this is the one I got.

But let's face it, the specs used to engineer these things are pretty universally copied and basically the shape of these guitars is identical. Sure, the costly ones use better materials, electronics, have better quality control, finishes and perhaps more consistency out of the box. Ok, that is something. But the shape of a Strat is the shape of a Strat.

I'll always remember a time when a friend of mine, a pretty good bass player who played a Fender Jazz, picked up a Hondo clone of the the Jazz at the music store. He was amazed at how identical the feel was. He loved it. It was $150 or something. He sounded great on it. I'm pretty sure 80% of the sound comes from the fingers, from technique, the remainder might be a tighter coil, a denser wood, your amp or whatever.

Clapton would still sound awesome on my Mexican strat.

My guitar, similar to the one above, was a particular winner. I wasn't crazy about the finish, a little too Vegas for me, but it felt good in my hands. The neck was nice and smooth and the action was the way I liked it right off the rack. It had a locking nut, which was all the rage at the time, (this was the Eddie Van Halen days), but I wasn't so much dive-bomb crazy and happy the guitar stayed in tune forever.

How much? I don't exactly recall, but it couldn't have been more than somewhere in the $200 -$350 range at the time (mid 1990s). I almost didn't buy it because once at the counter they discovered didn't have a Fender case available for it. They ended up throwing in an oddball Ibanez case with a loud purple lining for like $20, which I reluctantly accepted.

I played it for a year or two. I sampled it, recorded some demos, etc. I discovered one unpleasant detail, a sharp edge at the nut. It wasn't a Floyd Rose.

Eventually the syndrome I began this post with kicked in and it went up for sale. This was pre-Ebay, but a Fender is a Fender, even if it is a Mexican one, and someone hopped on the classified ad the very first day. It sold by 4 p.m. that Saturday and ridiculously it fetched about what I paid for it, or maybe a bit more.

The guy who took it home played much, much better than I could and he didn't even try to bargain. I was so happy to see him walk away with it because I knew it was going to be used to make actual music.