Gary’s Story
It took me a long time to jump back into Strat-land. There are millions of Stratocasters out there. How does one know a good one? I wasn’t interested in owning one simply because every collection is supposed to have a Strat. I wanted one that was special.
In retrospect, 1959 was a banner year for electric guitars. At Gibson you had the Les Paul Standard and the still-new ES-335. At Fender, 1959 marked the important transition to rosewood fingerboards on the Stratocaster.
So when I found a 1959-style Strat Masterbuilt by Todd Krause, a builder closely associated with instruments made for Eric Clapton, with a Brazilian rosewood fingerboard and pickups wired by John Cruz, it was time.
Then I listened to Greg Koch demo this particular guitar. He marveled at the quality of it, and one small thing caught my attention: he never touched the tuning keys. The guitar simply stayed there.
The Iced Blue Metallic Relic finish gives it tremendous personality, but that isn’t why I kept it.
It has SOUL.
There are guitars that check every box on a specification sheet and somehow leave you cold. Then there are guitars you pick up and immediately want to keep playing. This is one of those guitars, one of my very favorite playing guitars.