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.