Does anyone here own one?
What's Good?
What's not so good?
what did you pay (if you don't mind)?
Would you recommend one tother musicians?
Any other info we should know?
Thanks.
It's not a flame, but a quarter sawn neck. The grain runs across the neck giving the illusion of flame on some. The one I have looks pretty flamey. It's light weight, and sounds great. I like it for the vintage vibe with modern features like a 12" radius and bigger frets.
Tried one for the first time last week at GC. Overall thumbs up.
What I liked best - the neck. Perhaps my favorite neck profile ever on a Fender; stock, Custom Shop, whatever. Feels like a "real one".
What I liked least - the finish. Two-tone sunburst was dull and lifeless and kinda ugly, and the neck was too tinted. At least on this particular one. But as they say, you don't play the paint.
I had to scrape the lacquer from the sides of the frets. They installed the frets, then sprayed the neck. Mine is an early one. More recent ones may be done differently.
I am used to the fret height. Now that the neck finish is no longer sticky, it is comfortable to play. I played one recently that had slightly taller frets, so Fender may have responded to complaints about fret height.
I could've got one for $1250. Yep, basically cost, but I passed. It was thin sounding even for a strat. I tried # 59 from Musician's Friend as well and it too was very thin sounding. I compare these mostly acoustically and listen to the tone of the instrument itself. I actually like the pickups and the fat neck. Don't like the gunky thick nitro finished neck though.
I compared both EJ's to a 69 maple neck'd relic strat and a real '66 strat. The EJ's were very thin and scooped sounding. No balls at all compared to those other strats. They sounded much bigger.
I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one with that experience buddastrat. I tried a SRV, Mayer and two or three relics. The EJ just seemed somewhat..strident to me.