Fender HM "STRAT"

[Bikedude]

Anyone around here have one of these. I bought a brand new White one back when they came out, not sure when early 90's I think. It has 2 single coils and a Dimarzio HB in the bridge with a coil tap. Kahler bridge/wammy, funky pink STRAT logo on the headstock. Ebony fretboard, jumbo frets, pretty decent looking. I guess it was Fender's foray into Charvel land. I'm holding on to it for no particular reason, I'll drag it out occasionally. Is this thing worth anything? Just wondered, don't see much about them around here, or anywhere else for that matter. Just sayin!

 

[Bikedude]

From the activity on this thread, I'll sumize, that either no one's ever heard of this Fender, or it is basically a POS to all the tone conosiuors

 

[guitaraddict]

I've never owned one but played several. My brother in law has a few and loves them. IMO his play great.

 

[lawl Dave]

I've heard of these, and I believe they did a run of Heavy Metal Tele's around the same time. I've never played one, but I feel like Fender should stick to making more Fender-ish guitars and let Ibanez and Charvel and all of them take care of the high-output shreddy things.

 

[somedude]

Here's mine. 1989. It last year it was run if I remember correctly.

Good guitar. The DiMarzio in the bridge is a Super Distortion. My Super D has since gone microphonic, so I'm going to use the opportunity to upgrade the electronics.

Generally they're not worth very much (~$600-650 for a good condition Strat last time I looked into it). They seem to be one of Fender's rarest guitars, but there's no real interest in them so no one is pushing their price up.

 

[Smakutus]

They have great necks and all the ones I have tried played great. But I think the scale length is different from regular Strats.. Maybe 25"?

Jeff

 

[somedude]

25.1

 

[jtm622]

I've got one which I bought brand new in '90 or '91... Bur, are they worth anything? I vividly remember in the '80's and early '90's when the resale market for Les Pauls was in the dumper... big time... so, I think I'm gonna hold on to mine for a while...

 

[dcooper]

I have one too, hardly ever play it

 

[Joe Gamble]

Those were Greg Howe's guitar of choice for years. For worth, I think you are in $350-$400 land.

 

[danelectro]

I just bought this one from a friend a couple weeks ago. He replaced the stock pups with EMGs. This is my first "superstrat" and I'm having a lot of fun with it. The Kahler is just unbelieveable. I can go crazy on the tremelo bar, even taking the strings completely slack and it doesn't go out of tune one cent. I'm not crazy about the neck profile. The fretboard is very flat and the neck thin. I'm used to baseball bat sized Les paul necks. Stringing it is a pain in because you need to lock both ends of the strings using allen wrenches, but I guess that's the price you have to pay to have such a robust tremelo.

 

[mrrs]

These are very nice guitars and yeah, the HM teles are very rare.
I remember them having a very flat radius fretboard too.

The Dimarzio bridge bucker was actually a Super 3, not the Distortion, althought they are very similar.

 

[Red Suede]

Go back and listen to Greg Howe on "High Gear" and "Now Hear This" with his brother Al. Some people panned those albums saying his brother was copying David Lee Roth, but you didn't hear that criticism leveled at all the Dio imitators at the time. Great rock albums, to me. Anyway, the tones were mostly the Heavy Metal Strat. I had two, one with a maple fingerboard and one with a rosewood fingerboard, both with basswood bodies, and both with the Kahler Spider tremolos. I liked them.