I pondered purchasing this guitar for a bit over a year. It was a major upgrade to my previous one and I was quite excited. This guitar was also the first Fender strat I had ever laid my hands on. Was not disappointed. It feels buttery smooth to play and the HSS configuration really comes in handy since I also like to play heavier stuff. In spite of that, I also instantly fell in love with the clean neck pickup sound. I'm also really happy with the colour of this particular guitar, the black body black pickguard combo looks sweet.
I really don't have much experience with higher end instruments, which I also consider this to be, so I have no frame of reference, but still some small things were a bit disappointing. There was a noticeable gap between the edge of the pickguard and the body near the neck pickup which in itself probably has no effect on playability but still you'd expect the pickguard to be installed properly on an instrument like this... Also the whammy bar is really quite hard to screw in place. I was very careful not to mess up the screw threads by using too much force and still it is quite difficult to install it.
Otherwise I was very happy with the product and especially with how quickly it arrived: the website said 12 weeks, but I got the guitar in less than a month!
