This is a brand new Fender® Road Worn Stratocaster® that we've modified with some very nice upgrades, which are detailed below. All original parts are included in the sale. The guitar weighs 7.40 pounds. The Road Worn® model is designed to mimic an old guitar that's been heavily played over the years. But anything that's cool is worth making better, so we've made a few changes. First, we worked on the frets. There's no substitute for frets that have been properly leveled, crowned, and polished. Strings bend smoothly, the action can be set low without excessive buzzing, and they look nice. This guitar is now a joy to play. In the tone department, we've made a few changes. The first thing was to replace the cast-zinc inertia block in the tremolo with a steel Callaham block. No sense messing around; if you want the real deal you gotta belly up to the bar, capisce? And while we were fussing over the tone, we decided to replace the pickups with Fralin Split-Blade Blues pickups. Mo betta pickups is mo betta, no doubt about that, and Fralin is the "pickup purveyor to the stars" du jour. The Split Blades are all about single-coil tone, but without the hum. While we're not always that bugged about hum, it is certainly nice not to have it, and we find that the Split-Blades do an admirable job of nailing the tone of true single-coils, which is a pretty neat trick. Lots of pickup makers have purported to have done this, but we find that there's always a difference. But Fralin has more successfully minimized the tonal trade-off than most of his competitors. 'Cause he's cool. We didn't want to put new pickups in with the stock wiring (which, ahem, is not the neatest, and uses some inferior components). In fact, we replaced the jack with a Switchcraft jack (the Mexican guitars don't ship with a Switchcraft jack); we upgraded the switch to a CRL switch; and our pots - while made by CTS like the pots Fender uses - are ordered with tighter tolerances than the Fender pots. So it's all good. In fact, it's all the good stuff, because that's what we'd want in our guitar, so we assume that's what you'd want in your guitar. The guitar is wired with blender wiring: | Position 5: neck pickup | (blender control adds the bridge pickup) | | Position 4: neck pickup + middle pickup | (blender control adds the bridge pickup) | | Position 3: middle pickup | | | Position 2: bridge pickup + middle pickup | (blender control adds the neck pickup) | | Position 1: bridge pickup | (blender control adds the neck pickup) | As you can see, there is lots of tonal variety here, and the tones are great! Check the video below for confirmation. And how cool does this guitar look?! All in all, a great guitar for not a ton of cash. Bonus: It says Fender on the headstock. It can be yours today, unless you live outside the US (because this guitar cannot ship internationally, sorry!) Better jump, because our guess is it won't be around long. | | | | Video of actual guitar for sale | | | | | | Click images below for larger versions |  |  |  |  |  |  | |