Fender highway 1....

Anybody bought one.........any opinions......

yes, yes i did.

bleemin marvelous is the first thing that comes to my head.

First of all i love the neck and fretboard (maple in this case). It is a country mile better than the standard USA strats i have tried. Intact the Highway 1 i have is the nicest strat i have played.

The tuners are very well made, the guitar stays in tune perfectly.

The pickups are the perfect strat tone as well, surprisingly enough.

I have put 5 springs in the back to keep the bridge flush with the body (i have no time for floating trems) making this my ideal guitar.

When i went to buy this, this was the first one i played. I tried 4 others and all where equally as good. I chose the first one purely for aesthetics reasons.

Only down side is i had to buy a hard case separately for it as they only come with a fender gig bag.

All in all i am very impressed and i am very happy with it.

I got the guitar and case for £530 iirc.

hope this helps

IanG

website: www.ian-griffiths.co.uk Feedback welcome to: ian at ian-giffiths.co.uk

I have to agree with Ian, a beauty and delight to play and sounds fantastic.

Mine is still with gig bag, however. Hmmmmpf!

I find this H1 to be a very inspiring guitar all in all, due to excellent playability and tone. Tones range from nice mellow sounds that are great for clean arpeggios (sp!) or slightly breaking up riffs and chords, nice crisp cleans for funky rhythms (sounds pretty much identical to Jamiroquai's Love Foolosophy on the bridge through our Princeton 65 amp) to very raucous sounds with a bit compression and not a little bit of high gain.

Mine is maple fretboard, I also tried the rosewood board, but preferred the feel of the maple by a lot. Can't speak really for any tone difference, both pretty much the same.

Does everything I expected ... and more. Cavaet: this is the _only_ Fender made strat I've ever played, so I can't compare it to a mex nor an american standard, sorry (hence the tone breakdown above, I assume the same variety would be found in an american standard?).

Although they are entirely different beasts, generally, the overall feel of the H1 is, to me anyway, superior to the feel of my Les Paul studio. If I had to chose, I'd keep the strat.

An excellent guitar.

Very nice, wonderfull neck, just be carefull with the finish, its VERY thin...

Are we talking thinner than the Rory Gallagher finished Strat?

thin...

Probably due to the lack of lacquer over the paint (matt finish on the Highway).