My 2 cents worth....

Bought my first Strat in 1964....been buying and playing them ever since. As I told my son when he wanted to play. Go to every store and play them, you don't even need to plug them in (in the bigger scheme of things they will all sound approx the same through an amp).
What you are looking for is the one that fits your hand. If you have 100 "identical" strats made on the same day they will all feel a little different from each other. (that's why I love them)

If it is comfortable to your hand and feels good then that's the one for you!
rafone

I bought my first electric guitar which was a Gibson Les Paul Studio Gem back in 1999. Loved the guitar, but it was too much guitar for me at my skill level then. I had a stroke in 2002 which paralyzed my left hand and spent months in occupational therapy relearning how to button my shirt and tie my shoe. When I finally got around to relearning how to play guitar, I found my preferences changed as the Gibson neck didn't fit anymore. Long story short I ended up with a MIM HSS Strat and while it's not an AM STD it is very nice for what I do.

I said all that to say this. I went through a lot of guitars, pedals, and amps to get where I am today. Find a Strat that is comfortable for you to play and "speaks" to you. Every guitar I've played that I kept I knew within a few minutes of playing that something had clicked. Do that and you'll find an axe you'll love a long time.

Second thing I've learned was to not skimp on the amp. A good amp will make a bad guitar sound great. A bad amp will make a good guitar sound like crap. I have a DRRI that I love dearly which may be too much amp for you. For Blues and hard rock I am finding myself digging the Orange Tiny Terrors which are switchable between 7 and 15 watts and are great little tube amps.

Good luck on the journey!

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Fender Standard Strat w/ DiMarzio VVHB2 Bridge and Area 67's neck/middle
Gibson 2014 SGJ
Fender DRRI with Weber 12F150 50 watts light dope
Vox AC15C1PL stock
Vox V845, PaulC Timmy (surf green), Fulltone OCD, Dunlop Volume, Strymon TimeLine, T1M Mini A/B

The Select Strat is not chambered. Only the Select Tele with maple cap and ash body is.

The Strats are Alder and solid.

Thanks. For some reason I was thinking the Select Strats were also chambered (I have a Select Tele).

It seems to me if you're looking for that classic Strat experience for $2,000 get an American Standard Strat with three single coils, and a Deluxe Reverb amplifier, and call it a day. If you want the amp to be a little more versatile and don't want to deal with pedals you get the Supersonic 22 instead but be aware it's maybe not as pure as the Deluxe Reverb.

You can futz around with modeling amps and Chinese/Indonesian/Mexican guitars if you want to but if you want the best and don't want to feel like you're missing out on anything you go the above route.

You have a lot of good advice here so I hate to pile on, but for me the best Strat is the Am Dlx HSS. A lot of purist would want to shoot me for suggesting a humbucker, but it works for me. What I really like is the compound radius neck, the LSR nut, and the S1 switch, which gives you 10 completely different tone options. With the LSR nut, this guitar almost never goes out of tune. The compound radius neck is the best of both worlds. Nuff said.

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'10 American Deluxe HSS Sunset Metallic
'10 JA-90 Thinline Telecaster
'15 Music Man JP-15 Blueberry Burst
'07 Les Paul Standard Faded LCPG #82
'14 Carvin ST300
'12 Carvin CS424S
'66 Guild Starfire IV w/Bigsby
'14 Warmouth Partscaster Daphne Blue

Hey...'different strokes'. I've said here over and over for the past nearly 5.5 years.

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"Another day in paradise!"