Fender FSR Standard Stratocaster Sunfire Orange Flake review part one
By Rob Sandall
| Posted in Feature
This Fender FSR Stratocaster is surprising, and Fender Stratocasters aren’t often surprising. This sounds like a bad thing, but it’s not meant to be. A Strat is a Strat, and buying a new one carries with it an assurance of quality, attention to detail and tone – people buy them for very specific reasons, and know what they’re getting. It’s comforting, although of course hardware changes and variations on a theme will also exist, but a common view – one that I share – with Strats and Teles is one that subscribes to the “if it ain’t broke…” rule.
That said, though, you can keep the rudiments of the guitar and everything it is meant to be, and raise some serious eyebrows by adding a hell of a paint job. I’ve always been a fan of the limited runs, and have owned some odd Japanese variants in the past. It’s also true that sometimes they just don’t hit the mark – there’s a fine line between ‘cool-looking’, ‘eccentric’ and ‘horrible’, it turns out.
So this is a bit of an odd review, because what the guitar actually is, is a Mexican Standard Strat with a paint job. However, I’m going to go ahead with it because a) we haven’t actually got a review of this classic model in the archives at present and b) this paint job – ‘sunfire orange flake‘ – is on the money.
The flake finish looks like someone’s detonated a glitter bomb on the wood and then lacquered over it. Again – I mean that in a good way. It’s a consistent finish, but brilliantly the flakes are of different sizes, so you get an incredible gleam off this guitar. Moving it under lights makes it look like it’s awash with orange electricity, and any flamboyant guitarist worth his or her salt will be happy with the level of attention it’ll draw.
That’s the first thing to say with this guitar: you’re going to love it or hate it. Glam rock bands will be thankful for its emergence, and pop and indie groups are likely to love it too. I can’t see Metallica buying them in, but the darker minded among you should check out the more evily-minded Root Beer Flake colour scheme – same idea, more ox-blood execution.
Interestingly, and unlike a lot of the Standard paint-jobs, the rest of the guitar has been aesthetically tweaked too. The pickguard and other plastic appointments are parchment coloured, which is a bit less harsh on the eyes than white would be, and a 70s-style logo and tinted neck back the ‘classic’ (of a sort) look up.
FSR stands for Fender Special Run by the way, but in part two I’ll actually review how the thing plays instead of being incredibly shallow. It’ll be nice revisiting something so timeless at an affordable price, to be honest. Let’s see how it feels to rock out, glam-style, with the Fender FSR Stratocaster.
