FEnDER gARy MOORE STRAT

It might be a slavish repro of the late, great man’s Stratocaster, but here we ask the question, as a new guitar at £8,000, how does Fender’s Limited Edition Gary Moore Stratocaster really stack up?

All Strats are the same, right? If only. It’s a testament to the design of this all-time classic that models of a similar price level can sound, play and feel, remarkably different. You find a good one then, dammit, you play another that trumps it. Throw in the diverse range of styles that the Strat has excelled in, in the hands of a diverse number of players, and you have a seemingly simple instrument that can be annoyingly slippery to define. It can be just as hard, if not harder, to find a Strat that suits you.

So with just 27 of these £8k Gary Moore tributes coming to Europe, how does it fit into this world? This writer was dispatched to Fender’s Artist centre at John Henry’s rehearsal complex, with no knowledge of Gary’s original Strat, to take a look.

As we examine the guitar we notice the enhanced contours with different colour undercoats – both white and a yellow – plus, on the forearm contour, the darker Dakota Red shows through the Fiesta Red. The neck wear is interesting, too, in that although it’s worn away on the treble and bass side, there’s visible lacquer on the centre back – another indicator that many ‘heavy’ relics really aren’t that accurate: this is a replica of a guitar that has obviously been played at a high pro-level. The wear on the rear of the guitar not only approximates the original, but looks very real. It’s a convincing piece.

Some players might be surprised at its relatively thin neck depth in lower positions, which fills out up the neck and measures 19.4mm at the 1st fret and 22.8mm at the 12th. Of course, some of that might be down to the flattening of the original’s fingerboard radius over the numerous refrets – it would have been 7.25 inches originally; now it’s spec’d at 10 inches – which obviously slightly reduces the neck depth.

There’s a typically ‘old’ ring and resonance to the acoustic voice; the vibrato is set with three springs and approximately one tone upbend on the G string. We’d taken along our well-used Road Worn Strat as our reference and, as you’d perhaps expect, the Gary Moore has a noticeably more vibrant response.

Now, DC resistance readings aren’t the best indication of what’s happening with the pickups, but here we measured the bridge at 5.76k ohms, the middle at 6.03k and the neck at 5.78k, far from the modern thinking of a ‘graduated’ set where, typically, the bridge is the hottest. And plugged in, the bridge really has quite a low-output, edgy sound that’s beautifully contrasted by the neck pickup. The surprise, perhaps, is the close voicing of the neck and middle pickups; for example, through a crunchy, gained Bassbreaker on lower-string voicings, the difference is minimal, but past the 12th fret lead lines on the top strings sound profoundly different.

The appeal then, from a new guitar standpoint, is this tonal width and contrast – each pickup has its own character and nuance and there’s a sweetness to the bridge that sounds edgy and wiry, but far from weedy. Also, the pickup heights are a little different from how many of us would set them: the bridge, as set, has virtually no tilt – it’s approximately 2mm from the strings (fretted at the top fret) on both treble and bass sides, while the middle pickup is, despite it’s beefiest DC reading, set the closest to the strings, again with relatively little tilt.

To a collector and/or Gary Moore fanatic, it’s probably worth the cost, although we struggle to justify that kind of money without the guitar’s back-story. It is, however, one of the most realistic Relics we’ve played; the attention to the smallest details is impressive, not to mention its ‘old guitar’ resonance and feel. But it’s the pickups and sounds that intrigue us: that low-output bridge pickup really works, adding subtle and very wide dynamic range to the instrument. verDICt It can be a depressing experience to play a guitar as good as this (not least because our own go-to Strat now feels and sounds inferior). We might not be able to stretch up to a Master Built any time soon, but this guitar’s pickup specs, settings and three-way pickup switch have given us plenty to think about. Like we say, not all Strats are created equal!