Shopping day

[Dunky]

Spent most of the yesterday in Blackburn at a well known gear shop.
Played around a dozen guitars including a Baja tele, japanese 62 reissue tele, road worn 60's strat and tele, mexican deluxe player strat and a few other models. All of them were in the £500 - £600 ish price range, (except the road worns). I only mention the price to compare what is available for simimlar money.

Thought that the road worn strat was really nice, felt good and played well with some really nice driven sounds (not as good clean though).

The road worn tele was a bit of a disappointment, not in sound but in looks and feel. Kept wanting to like it but personally I think the distressing has gone a little too far (only my opinion though), couldn't help thinking that 3 or 4 years down the line it would look too road worn.

The mexican deluxe was nice but somehow didn't sound 'stratty', the model has a switch to give extra pickup combinations but it just didn't have the sound for me. Another down side was that after about half an hour there was colouring from the fret board on my finger tips.

The japanese 62 tele was fantastic build quality, great feel to the neck but I didn't think that the neck pickup did the guitar justice, also why a tele with no both pickups together option?

The Baja was absolutely fantastic, it's a big chunky neck and at first I was put off but after half an hour it felt really natural. The thing sustains for ages (? due to the thick neck). The range of tones is amazing covering all the usual tele sounds and some really good extra's. I was offered a damaged one (cosmetic damage to the back, couldn't be seen at all from the front) for £200 less than the new price. Really tempted.

In the end I ended up with the finest strat I have ever played, really, honestly the best feeling and sounding ever. The kind of guitar that sounds like the ones in your head at about 4 in the morning when you can't sleep. A used Japanese strat (62 copy I think but not sure... don't care as I love it). 7.5 radius which feels so comfortable to hold, satin matte not gloss neck finish, small frets which I really love as they give loads of room for my chubby digits up the dusty end. It's really dirty at the moment and badly in need of some TLC and setting up so piccies later.

All in all a great day , especially as I got a good discount on it.
Goes to show that there is some great gear around for decent money and loads of choice in the smae price range.

Still tempted by the discounted Baja though but I think the wife would kill.