Jeff Beck Signature Stratocaster Review
I was a humbucker guy the first 25 years I played guitar starting off on a used Les Paul Pro that I bought working down at the local grocery store. It wasn’t until I picked up a copy of Jeff Beck’s “Guitar Shop” in 1997 that the “Strat sound” really got stuck in my head. Around this same time, I also started listening to Stevie Ray Vaughn and Buddy Guy almost non-stop. After listening to the magical, glisening tones that Stevie, Buddy and Jeff were creating with this legendary guitar, I knew a Fender Stratocaster was in my future.
I started going out and playing some Strats around town, but even though I was getting the sound I wanted, there was a major problem - the modern, skinny Strat necks. After years of playing fatter, thicker necks on my vintage Ibanez AS200 hollowbody and PRS CE 22, the thin, modern Strat necks were really tough for me to play. To establish a baseline, I measured the width of my Ibanez AS200 from the back of the neck to the the top of the fingerboard - about 7/8″.
A little discouraged, I started checking some online forums to get more information on vintage Stratocaster necks - I had heard they were substantially larger than their modern counterparts. After hitting the forums, it seemed I had heard right - the vintage necks were substantially larger, but so were the prices for the vintage guitars they were attached to. As I continued my research, I came across a thread one night concerning the “baseball bat” necks on the Jeff Beck Signature Stratocaster - the poster thought Fender was insane for building guitar with a neck nobody could play. “Hey!”, I thought, “This looks promising…” I immediately started researching the Jeff Beck Strat and found that the neck on this model was very similar to the early 50s neck that Beck adored. It sounded exactly what I was looking for.
I knew intuitively this was probably the perfect Stratocaster for me, but finding one to play around Philadelphia was tough. The best I could do was a little shop in New Jersey that had several Strat Ultras - same basic neck and body specifications, but completely different electronics. I headed over one Saturday afternoon, played the Ultras and was thrilled with the feel of the necks. Feeling confident, I decided to do something I promised myself I would never do…buy a guitar I hadn’t actually played…
When the guitar came in, I couldn’t have been more thrilled. It was the retro Surf Green finish (my friends call it Milk-of-Magnesia green, but they’re just jealous!) with a white pickguard and rosewood fingerboard. Looks aside, the first thing I did was snatch it out of the case and checked out the most important part - the neck. To my delight, it was actually a little thicker than the Ultras I had played and didn’t have laquer on the back to slow me down. To my great relief, this guitar was everything I wanted.
In my next entry, I go over all the features of the guitar and give you my impressions after playing this guitar for several years.