1989 Fender HM Strat

Details

I found this guitar online at Guitar Center, as I get many guitars from there, and while not in totally perfect condition it is in overall nice shape with original hardware and controls. I was pleasantly surprised by the Kahler Spyder trem, which many online denounce compared to a true Floyd Rose but I found to be perfectly adequate sounding and offering good tuning stability - although this trem was blocked for dives only, so it wasn’t a true test since that helps a lot with stability.

Also quite fun are the TBX tone controls, one of which is connected to the bridge pickup - which I prefer. There is a detent at “5” on the knob, and that is essentially the same as a fully open standard 500k tone pot. Turned to 10 however, and these tone pots are supposed to be completely transparent, and there is a noticeable change when setting the controls that high - quite a bit more treble punch. This can be a great way to cut just a little more for leads without changing the core tone, switching channels, etc.

The factory pickups include a Dimarzio OEM that is rumored to be a Super 3. I measured this pickup at around 25k ohms, so that sounds about right to me - very mid heavy and high output and really pretty great sounding. The neck and middle single coils are Fender standard singles and sound exactly as you’d expect - a bit thin, bright, and scratchy - but I don’t mean that as an insult, they are very transparent and excellent for uncolored, vintage sounding rhythm and clean tones. I generally prefer thicker, jazzier neck tones especially for leads but this guitar does pull great double duty as a shredder and classic strat tones (except for the bridge single coil tone, which is average at best).

The “Razzberry” finish is very cool and has a similar shade to Kramer’s Flip Flop Red, but without the flip flop effect. The neck is a unique 25.1” scale, in between the usual 25.5 Fender and 24.75 Gibson scales. This isn’t very noticeable when playing, but does mean the guitar gets 24 frets as well - likely another box Fender wanted to check off when they were designing these.

I no longer own this instrument