Okay, so I don't know much about this guitar yet. But, I went to my local music store today and I saw a used (mint condition) Fender Stratocaster WITH Custom Shop Texas Special pickups and the store tag says its made in korea. It was only $499 and i just want to know what the difference between a MIK Strat and a Standard Strat besides where they were made. The head stock only said Fender but not the stratocaster. Unfortunately, I don't know the year or the actual name of the strat cause the people in that store are not that knowledgeable when it comes to Fenders. So, I'm hoping you guys can help me out. And also, what's the difference between HSS and SSS?

As far as I know, the only MIK Fenders were the Squier Series, not Squier by Fender. I have a CN2 = '92 Cort made Strat, silver logo. Somewhere on the ball it should have a small "Squier Series" logo where it normally says Original Contour Body or whatever series it is. A lot of people sand off the SS logo thinking it's a Squier.

I've found these to be of little (collectible) value - except to those of us who own them and know just how awesome they play.

Headstock should look like this if Korean and a Fender:

Hope that helps. $499 seems high. Word on the street is $200, or so, maybe. The pups could affect that.

There ARE actually MIK standard strats there very rare over here in america though and not many were made, they have the E10 serial and do not say squire and are made with japanese parts. I Will be coming into possession of one soon.

I'd love to see that when you get her I've seen "E10" #'s but not on any MIK Standard. Some may knock Korean made Fenders but I have nothing bad to say at all. I suspect mine to have Japanese parts - and I have to reserve myself here but having mine since new (I'm a relative rookie who took a 15 year hiatus) I wonder about the origin and dates of a lot of her parts.


To answer the original question, which I missed part of - HSS vs. SSS denotes the pick-up configuration. I.E., H = Humbucker S = Single Coil

Ah yes, I will be inspecting it for authenticity today and taking pictures, I may even post quite a few