Here's my story.
A friend hired me to turn balusters for him using rock maple.
Project completed, my friend starts to pay me. I told him I had wanted
a buy a stratocaster for some time and asked if he could just write the check out to the guitar shop so I wouldn't have to dicker with the bank.
I told him I was a little short meeting the price and he paid the difference
as an advance.
Real cool, huh?


I tracked the progress of the shipment and followed it from Kansas City to Wichita, Oklahoma City, Dallas/Ft Worth, El Paso, Deming, Tuscan, Phoenix, Ontario and finally my town. It'd seen the rain and thunderstorms in OKC earlier this week and at that time I decided to give it a name as it it is my horse. That name is "Thundercloud".
Fitting as I am part Caddo and my family's roots
are in OK and it was the Caddo tribe that gave "Texas" it's original name "Tejas".

It arrived yesterday to the store and I picked it up this evening.
The strat isn't anything fancy or unusual from other mass produced units
(Black SSS w/maple neck), but it sounds pretty good and it's got a pretty strange coincidence.

The last 3 digits can be my home address and "Corona" is the street I live on also the same three digits are used to define a famous Hemi engine displacement.
Ahhchoo - http://www.garlits.com/images2009/Swamp ... 0rat-8.jpg

Me feel cool right now as my guitar seems to like the same things I like already. I've got a feeling my horse and I are gonna be pals for a long time.

I actually prefer this "Hemi"......



......But no matter.

Got any pics of the new guitar?

Arjay

_________________
"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

Congrats twinhit nothing quite like getting another guitar eh.

Retro" just had to say what a beautiful looking car, ever since i saw "Bullit"
as a kid ive loved the look of Dodge cars, im in England so the cars we had in the late 60 s and later were Vauxhall Vivas, Ford Anglias lol
and if you spotted something a bit special it would be a Jag on the telly perhaps!

I must have been playing this guitar for about 5 hours now and
the Delta Tone takes some getting used to as the guitar I had been
playing was a Hamer Slammer that belonged to my friend's daughter.
She'd been wanting it back for some time now.. at least 6-8 months.
I told my friend that I wanted the electricals out of that thing in
case I wanted to use it some day in the Strat.
What would be kinda cool, but complex to make I am sure, is a variable capacitor (VC) rather than the fixed value capacitor so typical of these things.
A VC could modify the value and thus one could tweak it.
It may still be impractical as these things are quite large but in any case
the concept seems interesting to me.
To tell you the truth, I think a whole new approach is needed. something
that hasn't been done before, something dramatic, something that doesn't
require extensive modifications to an existing body.
I think of the pickups and controls as something of an automotive drivetrain. The body and neck is the automotive chassis and body.
I firmly believe Leo Fender had modification in mind when the Stratocaster was designed. Being experienced in radio repair gave him all kinds of ideas as it relates to "this is a good design and or this is a bad design"
while working on all sorts of radios, be they good, bad or ugly, and
such on the job observations would have taught him to keep it simple.
I believe he insisted on trying to eliminate bad design, keep it simple from the get go. Sooner or later someone decided to hotrod their strat and
and the rest is history.


How about 426 Max Wedge?


In Race form The Melrose Missile

Thanks Al,
Jags are cool. Not so sure about a Viva. I think of Las Vegas, "thank you very much"...

Midway down this link you'll see an Anglia - they were a somewhat popular
little tobacco tin to modify back then. I don't think there would be too many laughs when a 426 Hemi Anglia came to life and lit the tires.
(Wonder if they ever "Hemified" a London Cab.)
http://www.cruisinonchromemagazine.com/ ... onpg3.html

Thanks Arjay, those Challengers are nice too.
Kinda makes you wish you had a stable.

Sorry, no photos. but it's the standard run of the mill American Standard
Black w/maple neck and white pickguard. (706 is the specific code)


While I have long been a Chevy man, I also have been a Dodge man.
As for Ford, I have always been extremely selective as their products, car or truck never really appealed to me so as to make me a loyalist. I do like a few Fords too.

1930-1970 I have a ton of favorites over this 40 years span.
I don't think they'll ever, ever make em like that again.


Hmm I just remembered that I used to drive a 425 HP Caterpiller with 13 speed and 3.73 gears when I used to drive big rigs over the road cross country. 425 is close enough for me.

Wait a minute, this is the stratocaster forum... sorry folks, I lost sense of the discussion - Cars and Trucks do that to me. Sorry you had to see that.


Back on topic.
I simply see the Stratocaster as an excellent platform for tonal experimentation as well as darned goodlookin historically influential work of art that has been many musician's axe of choice.

I am enjoying it.

Then in the interest of "fairness"......



(Marina Blue is a pretty close match to Lake Placid Blue, I think)

Arjay

_________________
"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

Twin, congrats dude on the new horse. i always want a new Strat but i have 3 plus my Strat-style e-bay i just put together. my wife says i dont need that many since i'm not in a band but to me its therapy that keeps me sane. plus they're all set up different. Strats rule.

Retro, sweet Chevelle. Funny how we all pick cars by the Strat color equivalent.

Twinhit wrote



I think our UK Anglia was more like a Ford Pinto (from the 70s) only probably more basic and smaller hehe.

That Anglia from the web link looks a bit like something here called a Chrysler PT cruiser much more recent.

Forgive my ignorance folks but whats a hemi, a wild guess by me is something to do with the cylinder head ? ? Not clued up on big ol american blocks.

Agreed, I just received my MIM strat, Lake Placid Blue, a couple of weeks ago and that's the first thing that hit me about the color. I worked at a Chevy dealer for years in the 70's and saw plenty of Marina Blue corvettes and the color is nearly identical.

Brian

That's cool, Brian. There's a connection for you.
If that were my story I would probably view my Strat as a Marina Blue Corvette. I can only imagine the torment of the tease.

I know, colorwise, Black isn't for everyone. In a car, it gets real hot under the sun and you have to keep that car CLEAN! One speck of dust and it's filthy. I for one, like the color and have for many years. Just because I like the reflection of it's surroundings and in doing so it brings out the body lines accentuated edges. Looks real cool at night when it reflects the city lights or the moon on a night fit for howlin'.

A MIM may not be US made but the ones I've seen are REAL nice!
My friend, same one, also has a son who now owns a MIM. Candy Apple Red or Midnight Wine I think. The Black/white PG/Rosewood Neck Hamer clone I had been playing was his first guitar. The body was made from Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF). Surprisingly, it doesn't sound all that bad. In fact, after playing this strat, I am still hankerin' to buy the electronics out of it by means of replacing them with some new stuff only
because I grew used to the tone. Something to put in my future tone cabinet. That is if I have a future. LOL

The word "HEMI" is in fact a referance to the Hemispherical design of the combustion chamber in the cylinder head.
Click here:
http://www.speedomotive.com/ps-581-112- ... heads.aspx

That PT cruiser is a pretty nice attempt but, proportionally, the car is much smaller than the types of sedans of the 30's. IMHO, it "looks" pretty cool
for a modern car made in a field of river rock econobobsleds.

Ford Pinto was an embarrassment. Apologies if I offend the Pinto fans.

Nice Chevelle, arjay thanks for fairness.
Originally, the big blocks for this year was the 396 however, people
have been dropping 427 into the bay that were available in the larger cars.
I'd like one of the Chevelle El Caminos and drop a 425HP 427 under the hood, and rebadge where necessary including SS if possible and... and....
use "Stratobucket" seats. (Apparently, GM and Fender went head to head over the use of "Stratocaster" as name for their bucket seats - the compromise was that GM could use the term Strato in the name while Fender could still use official GM colors and associated names)

But what if GM did get away with advertising "Stratocaster Bucket Seats"?
Ahhh visions of fragile bodies flying through the windshield following the delicate moment of impacting a concrete wall, I am sure were realized.

Re OP: I once moved from Toronto, Ont. to Sarnia Ont. On the way to Sarnia, I purchased a beautiful Guild D40 electric for 100CDN. When I arrived in Sarnia I rented a nice little cottage right on Lake Huron... cold man!!! At any rate, one day I got curious and looked into the guitar and low and behold... the serial number was 1658... my address was 1658 Tyre Drive! Strange! I think it's called synchronicity.