I read this among recent press releases from Fender. Just laughable.
Apparently, there is a new series of Fender guitars called “Streetwoods” So these guitars are yer standard Strats and Teles except the bodies and necks are made from woods ‘harvested’ from American streets. In other words, the woods come from tree-service woods, LOL. And they start at $9K. Which is at least partially crazy because oak and walnut, fairly common “streetwoods” are not good guitar woods. Oak just completely sucks, Walnut is heavy as hell.
So there’s some reason I guess to believe a $9,000. Strat made from that narly old walnut tree cut down from in front of aunt Edna’s house is built better than a regular Mexican Strat (which have gotten really good) for $500 or an American Strat for $1200..... Because these come out of the “custom shop” and are “master built”.
https://guitar.com/news/gear-news/fender-launches-new-collection-sustainable-guitars/
Yeah, totally ridiculous, as well as the black "Frankenstrat" pictured upthread.
However, the days of the $500 Mexican Standard are well behind us. I've been eyeing a Jason Isbell signature Tele. Not that I'm a huge Isbell fan, I just really like the specs. It's Mexican-made and nearly $1700 retail.
I will say the Mexican-made Fenders are really great instruments, even at their newly inflated price points.
Yes. Well an electric guitars sound is 95% pickups and only a tiny portion comes from the wood. People have made great sounding guitars from glass or plastic. Almost anything you can attach pick ups to will do. One guy has sound charts of pickups screwed to a tree. It sounds just like a guitar. YouTube has dozens of videos on this subject.