New Made In Mexico Strat Pushes the $2,000 USD Mark

[Eagle]

Nato is similar to the Park Bench species.

Nato has been a go too fake mahogany for years now at the low cost end , Sapele on more expensive instruments and recently Okoume. The trouble with Nato is it isn’t really the same character as mahogany in terms of its straight lines porous grain or it’s dimensional stability. It was a favourite pattern wood for iron casting. It was selected for musical instruments because of its mechanical properties. Fine for bodies but definitely subpar for necks.

 

[DrewJD82]

Not to beat a dead horse, but for $2,000 there's a couple guitars I'd be looking at first:

Ibanez AZ2203N
- Made in Japan
- Stainless steel frets flawlessly finished
- Roasted maple neck
- Seymour Duncan pickups
- Gotoh bridge and locking tuners
- Hardshell case

Another one that might be fun would be a custom build from MJT. You can get a body and neck for about $1,000 and that leaves a lot of money leftover for parts and pickups.

I haven’t checked MJT’s pricing since I bought my Gilmour Strat parts, but I had a finished body and neck (neck was drop shipped to them via Musikraft) for something like $550. Not just the finish, the actual body and neck as well. The total of that one came out to $1050 and that’s with a new Callaham trem and the EMG DG0-20’s.

It’s exactly why I can’t reason buying an off the shelf Fender again. The Tele I eventually own will most likely be a partscaster, too.

 

[Eagle]

Mexico Fender could easily make anything from the whole line if the budget was in the model. USA Fender is just Mexicans building in Corona instead of Ensenada. With the dropping of the “made in” part of the USA guitars you can expect them to be more MIM than you think anyway.

 

[DrewJD82]

Mexico Fender could easily make anything from the whole line if the budget was in the model. USA Fender is just Mexicans building in Corona instead of Ensenada. With the dropping of the “made in” part of the USA guitars you can expect them to be more MIM than you think anyway.

No shit. I didn’t know that.

Well, I wasn’t around for the pre-CBS era, but I was there for the pre-Corona era!

 

[Eagle]

If we are talking MIM Fender the 70s reissue models are all better than the USA originals.
The Mex Charvels are also better build than vintage USA ones.