Vester Stratocaster

Its a cheap Strat copy - my first guitar. My mother bought it for me when i was 18. Solid alder body, maple bolt on neck with a rosewood fingerboard, sunburst. Its got 3 singlecoils, a volume knob and a tone pot for the neck and middle pickup each. Its strat man. ya know. It doesnt unfortunately have a truss rod which is real bitch.

I greaw up on Metallica and Guns&Roses and then discovered Sabbath and Zeppelin. I like heavey stuff and the weak single coils were of no use to me. They are quite possible the worse pickups i have ever played on a guitar, thin, tinny and lifeless. The inbetween positions are especially bad. the neck and middle pickup sometimes yield an ok tones after massive fiddling on both the guitar and the amp. the bridge single coil was crapped out by a leprechaun in hell - stinks. I am considering stripping it down and replacing everthing and putting in Kinman pickups and decent electronics - i love those pickups.

I dont remember how it came setup, but ive never had it worked on by a professional, instead opting to do the maintenance myself. Im not a luthier and needless to say the setup sucks. The whole thing rattles and i get buzzing at all but the highest action. The sadles suck, the nut is crooked and the fact that there is no TRUSS ROD only confounds matters. On the bright side, it does have the thinnest, narrowest, most comfortable laquered neck i have ever played. If u think an ibanez wizard neck is thin play this thing!! Oh and I screwed the tremolo down and removed the springs from the claw - making it a hardtail. The tuners suck its never in tune - i used to have to tune it while i played live. The strap buttons suck too and slip a lot.

Its stood up to 5 years of playing - I did use for gigging, practice, recording etc, but i also babied it. I know its a cheap guitar but its finished really nice and i always wipe it down before and after playing. I dropped it once, no dings or chips. The worse thing that ever happened to it was once i left it propped against the wall and my roommate tuned the heat up. It was in its case but the scratch plate got bent and wavy and now it shorts out if i switch pickups too fast - bummer! But its solid and will probably outlive me.

Who are these ppl?? I have never heard of this company other than on the headstock of my guitar.

Ive been playing 5 years and I wish my mom had bought me a LesPaul instead of a strat, or actually anything with humbuckers. Despite its many flaws i have a soft spot for this guitar (I learned how to play on it, plyed my first gig with it, wote my first song on it, and impressed a girl with a guitar for the first time with it) and will probably strip it down and put in high quality parts - including Kinman pickups and then store it under my bed at my parents house. I never play it and i need a guitar for when i visit them.