Here you go.. being a Yngwie fan, I've decided to transform my Yngwie Malmsteen signature strat into a 'Play Loud' tribute strat.
As some of you know, Fender only made 100 of them as limited edition and only 36 of them was issued through dealers in US. Not only that, the ridiculous price swayed many people away from it, including myself. But I've always thought that it is Fender's one of the coolest looking relic'd strat that exist now and wanted one ever since.. and I apparently found a way.

These are the real masterbuilt strat that I always drooled by looking at it..

...So it ended up being this way..only about 40% done..still need to dirty it up and beat it to hell. Hope I have a progress pics but here you go. Tell me what you think of it?

Very cool job! I have wanted to get into doing some relic work...

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Xhefri's Guitars
www.xhefriguitars.com

This is looking very nice.

Very nice.

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

Sorry about resurrecting a thread that has been dead for a long time, but I felt the record needed to be set straight about this for the benefit of anybody that stumbles upon this thread as I did.

PLAY_LOUD also had a thread going on strat-talk.com about this "Duck" replica he supposedly built, and it turned out to be fraudulent. He did not do the paint work or relic job on this body and neck--it was done by Chris Locke of Locke Custom Guitars in Ohio, and PLAY_LOUD used the pictures of Locke's work in progress and took the credit for himself. I am the current owner of this guitar and have corresponded with Chris Locke several times about it, and he said PLAY_LOUD had paid him to do the work on a 2010 Yngwie Malmsteen Artist Series strat body and neck, including the application of a forged Fender Custom Shop decal on the back of the headstock at PLAY_LOUD's insistence.

Before I knew it was a fraud, PLAY_LOUD had offered to sell the guitar to me and I bought it for $1400.00. I figured it was worth that price, since it was made with parts from a 2010 YJM signature strat (I had bought another YJM strat earlier that year, also a 2010 model, for $1750.00 new), plus you figure all the work that went into making this guitar look like the "Duck" had to be worth something. At least PLAY_LOUD didn't try to scam somebody out of $12,500.00 for it by claiming it was a real Custom Shop YJM Tribute strat, which the application of the fake CS decal would suggest. I recently sanded the CS decal off of it. I don't plan on ever selling this guitar, but if something ever happens to me I don't want anybody else trying to scam somebody with my guitar! I just never felt right about having that decal there anyway.

Two years later, I still have the guitar and I love it! Played it for a good hour and a half today in fact. For more info on this guitar with pictures, go to http://www.strat-talk.com/forum/stratoc ... hread.html

Here's a pic of it with my other 2010 YJM signature strat:

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Mike

Hi Mike,

this guitar is absolutely stunning, a master piece. Very fair price and you are the proud owner. For sure it´s a keeper.
I really like the photo of the two guitars, amazing.

Keep rocking \m/,
Robin

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http://www.youtube.com/robinstrower
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Thanks Robin!

I realize it's not dead-on accurate the way the Custom Shop version was, but I also didn't have $12,500.00 laying around to spend on a guitar (my house would be getting a new roof first if I did have that much laying around anyway). However, after looking at many Duck replicas for sale on eBay and other places over the years and finding them to be extremely inaccurate attempts at replicating Yngwie's famous guitar, this is as close to the original as I've seen in the sub-$2K price range. I think it's a good thing that it's got some easy-to-spot differences from the CS model so no one that has done their due diligence could be duped into paying an extremely high price for it if it should fall out of my hands (get stolen from me or whatever).

The guy I bought it from even managed to get his hands on a flight case with "Yngwie J. Malmsteen" stenciling and case candy like what the CS version came with, and tried to sell it to me at an additional cost, but I told him no, I just wanted the guitar and didn't want to pass it off as something it's not.

Here's a pic of all my strats together:



And another of most of the rest of my guitars (a couple of them were being worked on at the time and didn't make it into the picture:



The two YJM strats are by far my favorites out of the lot! I just love the silky smooth stainl;ess jumbo frets on them!

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Mike