Please say Konichiwa to my new guitar...

Now I'm sure we all remember Gemihen and his preferences for playing Parker and 'Bergers.

Then he got to like the Storatocaster

Now if only I was black, talented, had a head full of acid and could actually play the guitar.........



I ordered it on Friday night from Ishibashi (after having a few jars, natch.) and it arrived on Wed morning which was pretty impressive. But I was very concerned when I saw the way it was packed TBH, only in a crappy triangular cardboard box, lots of bubblewrap and a few Shinto prayers no doubt:

But it was completely undamaged:



It has a really low action as set up out of the box. The nut is particularly low. I took a photo of that but it didn't turn out well. There is zero relief in the neck but no buzzing which is great. This time I am going to leave the guitar 100% alone for at least a month before messing with the set-up even though its set for dive-only and I would prefer floating. I'm sure Fender Japan can do a much better job of setting up that I can.
The vintage radius seems to make no difference at all to me and I have no problem with the vintage frets either. My finger tips are a bit sore possibly because when you press on the string it is "supported" more by the fretboard and digs into your finger more. It kind of reminds me of the POS guitar I bought in 1978 from that point of view. The neck is quite slim but surprisingly not hugely different from my Lite Ash Strat. This guitar seems less "resonant" unplugged than the Lite Ash. The LA had different strings though which may have some impact. Not quite sure about the tone yet. So far I prefer the LIte Ash tone.
Fit and finish is really excellent. The laquer (or what ever it is) on the neck is really shiny and I could stare at it all day. It has a kind of sensuous quality. :eek: The finish is not sticky and in fact I prefer it to the satin finish on the LA.


It wasn't quite perfect though, the jack socket was screwed on just a tiny bit too far along its shaft and when you put the plug in it was forced back out by about 2mm. This lead to to crackling sounds. Being a total bodger (yes I said bodger) I tried to fix it myself. All I needed to do was unscrew the jack socket shaft and screw it back in a few mm further along. Naturally this leads to me snapping both wires off the jack socket. There was no slack in the wires in the jack cavity. In attempting to pare off some insulation I (naturally) cut the wire off even shorter. Obviously the only course of action is then to take off the neck (advice: never do this unless you have a capo or want to replace all the strings), then take off the scratch plate. There was loads of slack in the jack socket wire but it was wrapped around the 5 way switch. Many hours later and much cursing and abuse of innocent family members later the socket is back in place. The pots and 5 way switch look a bit puny IMHO. The ones in my MIK Lite Ash strat look better. (obviously its not how they look that counts)

I'm not even sure why I took this pic except that they all do it on EBay:


Here's my gang (in chronological order, of course):

I can barely play the guitar and my son recently asked me "Dad, do you know ANY songs all the way through?". So, realistically, what you are seeing here is a middle-aged guy having his mid-life crisis (for the 999th time). But, WTF, I just enjoy it;)