Guitar Story #15: 2004 Fender MIM Stratocaster
Details
- 2004 Fender Standard Strat
- Year Purchased: 2006
- Price Paid: Trade
- Notes: Great sounding plugged in
In 2006 I helped a coworker sell his 1979 Stratocaster. At this point, after owning the world’s worst Stratocaster, I had sworn off Strats and firmly believed I had no interested in ever owning another. I took my coworker’s guitar home to change strings, set it up and get it ready to sell. The guitar really spoke to me. Not enough to shell out what we were going to be asking for this particular Strat but enough to generally put Strats back on the menu. His guitar sold the very first day I listed it on Craigslist and the wheels started turning…
I still had my DeArmond which was living full-time in its case so I thought maybe I’d try and see if I could turn that into a Strat. I took some pics and tossed a “want to trade” ad up on Craigslist. After a couple of promising leads that failed to pan out I ended up doing a straight across trade in a Jack in the Box parking lot for a 2004 MIM Stratocaster in Olympic white.
This turned out to be a really weird guitar. It was pretty dead sounding unplugged. Actually, REALLY dead sounding. Almost like it had super old, crusty strings even after a string change. But to this day it’s one of the best sounding Stratocasters I’ve ever heard PLUGGED IN. It was pretty amazing and I wish I would have explored further the reasons for it sounding so good. As far as I know it had the stock ceramic pickups. It doesn’t make any sense. I was building DOD 250 Preamp Overdrive pedals at the time and this guitar into one of those with the gain down and the output maxed sounded incredible though whichever amp I plugged it into (mostly a 64 Princeton and a Sovtek MIG 50). It was fat, throaty and muscular. I wish I would have recorded it.
I ended up selling it not too long after I got it because I needed the cash for some other music related piece of gear and at the time I thought a Telecaster and a Les Paul were plenty of guitars (HA!)