Fender Custom Deluxe Stratocaster Honey Burst 2010

Fender describes the new Custom Deluxe Strat as being "designed for the working musician". What the company means by that is that its taken the vintage blueprint of this stalwart model and added some modern improvements to create instruments that at a casual glance look like regular Fender Stratocasters but which perform like highly-tuned thoroughbreds.

This Custom Deluxe is the perfect combination of vintage white, mint green pickguard and dark rosewood fingerboard (so many people don't like the 'gingery' rosewood so often seen nowadays that Fender selects the darkest East Indian variety for these guitars).

Other plastic parts are aged white, adding to the 'new but not new' vibe. The Custom Deluxe also features the deep contoured forearm and belly scoop so beloved of vintage Strat lovers, and the perfectly applied thin-skin nitro-cellulose finish is buffed to a high gloss too, helping to accentuate the guitar's slinky lines. Relic-haters, these are for you!

The 'modern player' twists that Fender has built-in include the company's two-point floating vibrato, which has been around for some years and has proved a hassle-free successor to Leo's original. Its solid stainless steel saddles and rear block provide plenty of twang and sustain and its usability goes without saying, given that it's whammy abuser Jeff Beck's system of choice.

Specifications