Acoustic Strat

Perfect Pitch ranks way up there in my “I like it!” meter because it’s the only music store here in Davao City (and maybe even in Manila) that lets people play its instruments without setting a time limit. For its staff, every person is a prospective customer, so they let us hold, handle, and play the guitars to our hearts’ content. I’ve always hated stores that put guitars out of reach of the customers and whose staff are hard to talk to; when they do let you play, they’ll give you the eye to make it clear you should be putting the guitar back now, if you please. At Perfect Pitch, the staff will even set up everything for you and encourage you to keep playing.

One night last week I had a meeting at SM City Davao, and when it ended I saw that I still had about 20 minutes before the mall closed. Since it had been a long time since I was at Perfect Pitch, I decided to rush up to the second floor store to check out what was new. When I got there I saw a slew of new axes, most of them China-made Fender Squiers. But I was hearing some live acoustic music, so I went farther in and saw that a man about my age was playing an acoustic guitar (“Time In A Bottle” by Jim Croce, if I remember correctly). It wasn’t him and what he was playing that caught my attention, however: on the wall, along with other acoustic guitars (it was actually strange to see Perfect Pitch carrying so many acoustics, it being more of an electric guitar store), were a Fender Stratocoustic and Telecoustic.

First, a flashback. Back in 1992 when I was getting married I bought a “Stratocoustic” built by RJ Guitars, a local maker that had a spotty record at best. It was similar to the one I saw at Perfect Pitch, but it had no pickup and its headstock was more stylized in a metal sort of way. It wasn’t very well built but I actually used it quite a lot, and it was with it that I discovered that God had given me the gift of worship-leading. With no pickup I had to rig ways to amplify it, including, believe it or not, sticking a cheap small microphone into the soundhole. Sadly, I eventually lost that guitar when it developed a crack in the soundboard starting from the soundhole going up to the neck joint.

The real Fender Stratocoustic and Telecoustic are much better made, of course. The country of origin is China, I think, although when they were originally introduced in 2000 they were apparently US-made (see a Harmony Central news article and a nice picture here). The original also had solid spruce tops, but I doubt that the ones at Perfect Pitch, priced at around 18,000 pesos (about 346 dollars), are similarly outfitted. At that price they’re probably laminated spruce.

Anyway, as their names denote, the Stratocoustic and Telecoustic are shaped like Stratocasters and Telecasters. They are also thin and have fiberglass backs and sides, which make the guitars light but also happen to give them a rather thin sound unplugged. The necks are standard Strats and Teles, but the action on the guitars on display could use a lot of setting up.

I picked up the black Stratocoustic and began playing with the other guy, who at that point was playing a regular blues line. Like I said, the unplugged sound was rather thin, but when the Perfect Pitch sales guy plugged it into an acoustic amp, I was floored. It sounded very acoustic, kinda like my own Ibanez AW100CE, although I had to tweak the equalizer a little more to get a better sound. It wasn’t thin or tinny at all, and while it wasn’t woody, it still sounded airy and bright.

It was too bad that I had only a few minutes to spend at the store, but those minutes were enough to tell me this guitar is good. With a little setting up it could be a great guitar, and its shape would certainly turn heads in gigs. Of course not all acoustic players will like the Strat look, but if you’re an electric player looking to play acoustic, or if you’re an acoustic player who wants to rock out, the Stratocoustic or Telecoustic may be for you. The unplugged sound is not really performance level, but it’s useful for practice since you can hear yourself without having to plug in.

I would suggest stringing it with extra lights, maybe .011s or even .010s, so you’d really get the perfect mix of acoustic sound and electric feel. If I had one I would probably even have a pickup installed at the sound hole, and then bore two holes in the soundboard to install a volume control and switch so I could then flip between acoustic and electric on the fly. Yeah, like a Parker Fly, only cheaper.