Staying with the original

[Jimi75]

I am one of those who knows that there are good copies of famous guitars and also good alternative luthiers, like Suhr, etc.

Anyways, I also know there is great potential and knowledge of how to make a great guitars at the original makers. I have just discovered Fender's new Relic Total Tone line. Think this is one of the most awesome Strat sounds I have heard in a long time. Meaty, transparent, warm. Of course the 57 CS Twin sounds ridicolously great, but this is also a good example for the fact that the original makers can easily hold up with the boutique amp builders. Fender's pricing compared to big G is also exceptionally great.

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[red]

My position is somewhat Zen-like :), "no original, no not-original". That is, I'll just go out and find the best sounding and playing guitar for my needs at the moment - regardless of what it says on the headstock.

Sometimes the original brand gets it right, other times not. For example, I find Nash guitars much better guitars than their Fender counterparts (except maybe for a few Fender Custom Shop models). And I think Victoria makes a much better 5F1 Champ than, for example, the Fender 57 Champ Reissue. Some things also were clearly badly designed originally and need to change today - for example, the Telecaster output jack cup system - the first thing I do on a new Telecaster is to replace that with an Electrosocket from Stewart-MacDonald - ordered a bunch of them a while back cause they're fairly cheap and I like Teles :).

I find that most of the time (but not always) there's a better deal to be had with boutique clones than going with the original brand. The Custom Shop stuff is pretty nice though, from both Fender and Gibson.

[ZMAN]

My tech has one of the team built custom shop relic strats. It is aged as the one in the vid and his is vintage white with mint gaurd and the same aged maple board. The pickups are hand wound by Abby as well. The sound is pure Fender and the feel is like he said, "like and old pair of jeans".
By Team built, this differentiates it from the Custom Shop hand built by one builder guitars. They are a small fortune. I think his was under 3000 Can.
Of course he is a Custom Shop dealer so he paid wholesale.
Oh and you think it sounded good throught the Twin. You should hear it through a 100 watt Marshall!
Any idea on the street price of this new run?.