Why the 1983 Fender Strat is a weirdly cool guitar
I've always had a bit of a soft spot for the 1983 fender strat, mostly because it's such a strange, misunderstood outlier in the company's long history. If you ask a hardcore collector about the early 80s, they'll usually start rambling about the "Dan Smith" era or the transition from CBS ownership back to private hands. But the 1983 "Standard" model is in a league of its own when it comes to being unconventional. It was Fender's attempt to simplify things, save some cash, and compete with the flood of high-quality imports coming out of Japan at the time. The result was a guitar that looks like a Strat, sounds like a Strat, but functions in a way that still makes purists scratch their heads. ...