A sensible, and of course cheaper, way is to get a Fender HSS Stratocaster. The one she uses is a bog standard HSS American Standard with a custom paint job done by Radical Brats in Tokyo.

A thought had occurred to me, why not go the whole hog. As it is not a Fender signature series, the custom paint job can be copied if I… get a whole guitar done by the ESP Custom Shop. If this was to happen, it won’t be tomorrow. Or next month. Whenever the spare cash appears, I may just do it. Please note the operative word may[1].

ESP does a Strat version called a Vintage Plus which is not currently available on their USA 2013 catalog [sic]. The UK one still has it and the Japanese ESP website has a similar one called the Snapper although it only has one tone knob as opposed to two. I shan’t wax lyrical about what I wanna have on the Mamicaster[2], but one other thing I did think of was if it is possible to have the neck as a set thru (neck thru is too expensive), like my Viper.

So, whaddaya think?

Now, if I have the balls to fill one of these in.

One thing for sure, though – if the quote comes back as £2000 or the like, I’ll hedge my bets on an American HSS Strat on eBay!

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[1]This whole paragraph reeks of DENIAL.
[2]I sincerely hope there’s no trademark on this name yet. I also found out the font used on the Fender Strat is a Futura Medium.