Fender Jeff Beck Custom Stratocaster (2008)

Of course every guitarist thinks about buying one of the true classics sooner or later. For me, I played several Strats over the years but none of them really got me into buying one until a friend gave me his 1996 Beck Signature Strat for 2 weeks. The really fat neck, the not-so-traditional specs such as Sperzel locking tuners and unusual pickup configuration immediately caught my attention.

After playing it for a few days I knew what I wanted. "When you want a genuine Stratocaster this is the one to go for!" :-)   It took some time to find one but it was worth waiting for!

As the years went by I noticed that the neck had become a little too strong for me and I really disliked the big heel that kept me from playing effortlessly on the upper frets. So the new Beck Signature seemed to be the logical follow-up: slimmer neck, rounded heel.

But in the meantime I had stumbled across a single neck that I wanted to use also; so I found a seller in the US who offered the body separately. Perfect! This time I went for "olympic white" instead of "surf green" and I also made another significant change: the vibrato was replaced with a Wilkinson VS-100 bridge which is the only one that drops right in without any modifications because the spacing as well as the screws are fitting the existing studs perfectly.

The neck was made by "Musikraft" and is a as much pleasure to the eye as it is for the hands and ears: featuring a '57 headstock shape, medium C profile, Brazilian rosewood fretboard (slapboard!), nitro finish, 10" radius, Dunlop 6105 medium jumbo frets, dual acting trussrod and rolled fretboard edges. These guys sure know their business. And as they are a Fender licensed company, the neck fits perfectly into the genuine Fender body.

The tuners were taken from a Fender Eric Clapton Custom Shop Stratocaster, so these are non-stamped Kluson tuners.

As you can see it has my typical control mod: I took a vintage mint replacement pickguard  and then inststalled only 2 controls (vol and tone) insted of 3. The switch is an "Eyb Megaswitch" as in all of my Strats.

The pickup set is a Kinman "Blues" from the AVN (authentic vintage noiseless) series.

If you came here through a search engine, go here for the frame. The pictures are copyrighted, do not use them without my permission. Thanx !