I wanted to submit some photos of my “strats” for your project. The maple fingerboard strat is a stock Fender American Standard with ash body and transparent blonde finish that I got from zZounds.com.

The rosewood fingerboard strat was made by wdmusic.com. It has a very light alder body and Burns Tri-Sonic pickups (ala Brian May).

They both sound great, play great, and look great. I like Strats because they’re so ergonomic (tummy cut, forearm cut, all tuners on one side). The only thing mine don’t have is a sculpted heel.

By the way, chrisguitars.com has a Fender HM Strat listed on the front page ($500). I bought a guitar from Chris before, and I would definitely buy from him again.

Steve

In response to a post on my blog, my friend Dallas got in touch with some info about his Hello Kitty Fender. Read and enjoy!

—Lori

Ok, Lori - you were asking about this guitar on your blog recently, so here you go.

I admit to preordering the Hello Kitty Strat when it came out. Not because I’m a major fan of Hello Kitty, but because I’m a Japanophile - and as a Japanophile, when I saw it in the catalog my first thought was: “Oh, yes - it Will Be Mine!” Clearly this would be an amusing item to hang on the wall along with the Tiki curios and cane trees that make up the decor in my project studio, Rock Island.

Well, when the guitar finally came in I had to send it back because Musician’s Friend sent me the black model by mistake - and as every Sanrio fan knows, black is the exclusive domain of Bad Batz Maru (who appears on the Fender Sanrio bass.)

Although it only has one pickup and one knob, it’s got a surprisingly ballsy humbucker in the bridge position which you can hear on my nostalgic tribute to old-school metal http://www.dallashodgson.info/songs/DontTouchThatDial.wma. In all other respects though, it’s a Fender Strat - inexpensive, comfortable, and a hardtail exception to my collection of whammy-equipped Ibanez Sabres.

My other Strat, a white “Roland Ready” model is great for recording sparkly clean single-coil guitar parts. But, being a lover of simplicity and technology, I’m hoping that my new red Variax will prove to be an acceptable substitute for recording a wide range of guitar sounds and allow me to cut back on some of the axes lying around the studio!

As you might be able to tell from the second pic, my wife -is- a major Sanrio fan. Along with the back of the guitar, you can make out a couple of other Sanrio items including a genuine imported plush Hello Kitty, and a steaming mad customized “Hell Kitty” humidifier (which also doubles as a stage fogger for very small venues.)

-djh

Hello Lori

I have read your website and wanted to write you an email anyway, so I
thought, why not do both things at once and show off my guitar, too

[snip stuff for Lori]

Anyway, about my guitar:
It is a Hohner (don’t laugh, they used to make some great guitars back
in the 80ies and 90ies) Revelation RTS which is a cheaper version of a
Revelation RTX. This guitar model has an interesting history: back in
1991 Hohner wanted to surpass Ibanez and make the best shredder guitar
in the world so they hired Trev Wilkinson - a famous guitar designer and
owner of Fret King - to design the guitar and Alan Entwhistle - a
British pickup maker - to design quite interesting pickups.
Soon, the first prototype model was made - Revelation ATX. It had an
interesting superstrat shape, a set-in maple neck with an ebony
fretboard, 27 (!!!) frets, top mounted pickups Wilkinson vibrato system,
roller nut and an interesting passive pickup circuit designed to emulate
different sounds, from Strat to Les Paul.

Only a few of Revelation ATX were made because the long set neck was too
expensive for Hohner so it is nearly impossible to get this guitar.
After that the production was simplified a bit: The guitar got a pointy
pickguard, a bolt-on neck and only 24 frets and was sold as Revelation
RTX. Although the neck was bolt-on, the neck joint was the best one an
electric guitar ever had: it was mounted inside the body, not in a
separate neck pocket, and a pickup was mounted on top (you can see the
neck joint on the attached photo). This arrangement not only sounds
better, it is much more comfortable to play. Even with very short
fingers you can play up to the 24th fret without any hindrance.
The guitar still had that Wilkinson vibrato system and a roller nut - a
combination which can be abused almost as heavy as a Floyd Rose system
but is much easier to tune. The guitar was very light, about 3 kg, which
added to the comfort.

All in all the guitar was extremely playable, with the slim and fast
satin-finished neck, low action, a very well balanced body and an
interesting tone circuit providing lots of different sounds. It was not
far away from being the ultimate shredder guitar.

But after only a few thousands of them were made in Czechoslovakia,
Hohner was sued by MusicMan because of - what else - the headstock
design. Hohner redesigned the headstock, but because of the lawsuit
costs they had to make the guitar cheaper so they put cheaper tuners and
bad pickups into the guitar, simplified the neck plate and removed the
complicated tone circuit. Fortunately they kept the most important
things: the body, the neck and the vibrato system. They sold this guitar
as Revelation RTS but soon after that Hohner practically quit the
electric guitar business so they have stopped to make Revelation guitars
in 1992.

This guitar was an underdog for a long time and was sold for about 150
Euros on eBay just three years ago, but somehow the people became more
informed and now the guitars go away for 300 and more Euros.

I also bought my guitar there, about 20 months ago, for 280 Euros and,
as I am more or less a guitar technician, modified quite a lot to be
nearly perfect

First of all I have replaced the .9 roller nut with a roller nut for .10
strings. Then I have shielded the guitar properly using a lot of silver
conductive lacquer and star grounding. After 30 Euros worth of lacquer
the guitar was practically hum-free, even with those bad singlecoils it
had. I have also added a 0.33µF 400V capacitor between the strings and
the ground so I won’t get shocked by a damaged amplifier.
After that I have added a new tone circuit, basically creating two
channels in the guitar: one where the pickups are arranged in series and
the other where the pickups are arranged in parallel, and a
push-pull-pot to switch between those channels. This allows me to have
about 20 different sounds.

Later on I have added locking tuners for more tuning stability and for
more comfort when changing the strings. Even later I have replaced the crappy single coils with active single coils made by Schaller. They sound more or less like EMG S pickups.
And yes, the tone circuit is still functional with active pickups, so
all of you who say that it is impossible to put active pickups in
series, you are wrong. It works pretty well, although the tonal
difference isn’t that pronounced as with passive pickups.
My last additions were green abalone dome knobs (just for the looks),
GraphTech saddles (for a bit better tone) and Schaller security locks
because I don’t like when the strap goes off.

The guitar is nearly perfect as it is, but there is one thing I want to
modify: the guitar needs a refret job and I want to refret with
stainless steel frets - so I don’t have to refret the guitar ever again.
But I am not brave enough yet to do it - while I have a couple of strat
necks to practise I am not sure whether my tools can treat stainless steel.

I am pretty sure, that you would enjoy playing this guitar - well,
except for the colour maybe

[Lori’s note: I *love* the look of the guitar AND the color]

Btw, I have forgotten to mention three more modifications I did to this
guitar:

1) Active tone shape controller instead of the tone knob, basically an
active equalizer which gradually changes the tone shape from sad face to
a happy smiley (mid boost to presence). This is possibly the most
important addition to any guitar with active pickups so it can shape the
tone from a hot humbucker sound to piezo acoustic one.

2) Distortion controller instead of the second tone knob - with 5
positions: 1 is bypass, 2 is very very littler warmer tone, 3 is a soft
bluesy overdrive, 4 is hard rock sounding, more or less like the rat
pedal, and 5 is ultra high gain. It can be very practical when you want
to send the amp a bit more to the dark side but have no spare pedal or
when you have to plug the guitar directly into a hifi amp or mixer.

3) Rockinger Blackbox. It is a little device for taming a floating
vibrato so it will stay calm when heavy bending. The negative side is
that you need a lot more force for upbending with the whammy bar, but
since I don’t do it often (except of showing off a bit to my guitar
pupils) I thought that I could live with that

Well, if I don’t bore you yet I can write about three other strats of
mine next two or three months or so - all of them are project guitars,
assembled by myself from custom made and aftermarket parts, but they
aren’t finished (one for example literally needs clear coating) yet.

And if you ever need some advice about modifying your guitar in any way,
just write me or even better, visit the guitarnuts forum

Dunkelfalke, Germany

The first picture I have sent is of my ESP H-1000 guitar. I picked this up
from my music store. Beautiful playing guitar. Very smooth. Seymour Duncan
pickups which sound brilliant with the wood they have used. Neck through
guitar, with a 3 piece maple neck. A very strong and solid guitar, but
surprisingly light. This guitar came with Sperzal locking tunners. I have made
no modifications to it, seeing as it simply doesn’t need them.
I mostly use this guitar for recording rhythm parts, seeing as it has a
fixed bridge.

The second and third photos are of me with my pride and joy, my Carvin.

I got this a couple of years back. I payed for half of it, the other half
was paid for by my Mum and some friends as a birthday present. It arrived
two days after my birthday.
It is a handbuilt DC-135 model made in the US, built to my specifications.
The neck is 5 piece laminated koa neck with two maple stripes and graphite
reinforced. The body is Mahogany with Emerald Green on Flame Maple finish.
It came standard with the Wilkinson Tremolo (which I still swear by its
smoothness).

This guitar plays brilliantly. Fastest neck and action I have ever played.
Words can not describe how well it plays. The action is about 1mm from the
12th fret, and 0 buzz. This also has sperzal locking tuners.

I came across carvin guitars after seeing Steve Vai play with Tony
Macalpine. Tony’s guitar looked amazing, and I wanted to look into it
further. He was playing a 7 string carvin. It was time I updated at that
stage anyway (at the time I was playing a low model Jackson Randy Rhoads).
So I went for it and ordered it online. A few months past and it arrived. It
is still my main guitar, and I have yet to play a guitar which can match up
to it.
I also love its versatility. It has the two singles and Humbucker, but no
selector switch. You have four switches, to simply turn the pick ups on or
off, so you can have hybrid sounds by turning on two pickups at a time. The
combinations open up a huge sound range. It also has a coil splitter on the
humbucker, making even more choices for sound.

This guitar has been through hell and back, from being in standard tuning
with 9-46 strings, to being in B with 13-56. I took it in for a service and
set up a month ago, and the tech at the store refused to do it saying “Man,
don’t touch it, its perfect, the intonation, action and everything else is
perfect…. hell the fret wear is minimal as well!”
Again, I have not modified this guitar in anyway. I don’t believe in buying a
guitar if you are going to modify it. Just buy the guitar you want to begin
with!

Anyway, sorry about my long descriptions, I love my guitars THAT much!

JoeJoe, from Melbourne Australia

Tom S wrote in with a very sweet letter, much too cute for me to post here *blush* He has just started learning guitar, and I wish him the best of luck!

Here is his photo with his Strat style guitar. Tom, I hope it brings you many years of guitar and musical enjoyment!

Lori

Carvalho from Brazil writes:

Dear Lori;
My guitar is Strat model, but is not Fender, just Eagle that i imagine you do not know. I brougt it in a Music shop in my town five years ago. I love the sound of my guitar. When I brought the guitar I had project to play rock”n’ roll like Nirvana, Alice in Chains with a friends, but it didn’t work right. Now I am just amateur, but I like too much play and watch you playing.
Many greetings from Brazil.
Carvalho.