I sold my Fender Strat a while back (the one that had Apaches in it) and have regretted doing so on many occasions since. My mind was made up that I had to do something about this when I played a friend's '58 Strat over Christmas. I took myself down to New Kings Road Guitars and played 9 Strats from Fender Custom Shop, to regular Fender vintage re-issues, to modern Fender Strats, and a couple of Nash's. In second place came a Custom Shop '57 but the one that spoke most to me and that I ended up taking home is the Nash S63 above.
It has a one-piece ash body finished in amber. The neck profile is a chunky C, there's a 10" fretboard radius and larger than vintage, without being massive, frets. There's a real fatness to this guitar's tone that I liked. It's still very clear but it's never too spiky in tone, even on the bridge pickup. It's almost a halfway tone between the brightness of a maple boarded '50s Strat and a woody sounding alder/rosewood Strat. I suspect that the ash plus rosewood may account for that.
For a one-piece body guitar it's not heavy at all, about 7.5lbs, which is a good weight for me. It's incredibly resonant and came beautifully set up. It had the trem flat on the deck as supplied but it only took 20 minutes to float it using this:
The Carl Verheyen approach Post floating, the action, intonation and so forth were still spot on.
I don't dislike the relic look, none of the other Fender Strats I played were relic'd and I'd still have bought this one had it been clean: the playability, feeling of quality and the tone were just what I was looking for. I'm not sure it's quite spec'd as nicely as a Fender Custom Shop but it's way cheaper and the difference in quality is tiny. I got a good deal on the Nash too, which made it even better value for money.
So far I'm a very happy punter.
