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My first electric guitar was a Vox Standard 25, which is basically a Strat with a dodgy headstock (Insert Suhr joke)
The guitar was really heavy but played well & sounded great to my ears, pickups were (Dimazio I think).
Also had a Sunn-Mustang P Bass
Absolutely loved it but let it go when I got the real thing. It was pretty damn decent for £90 in 1987.
Offset "(Emp) - a little heavy on the hyperbole."
Within two days of leaving home I swapped my Gibson B-25 for a Strat. It was a 1973 model, non-trem, rosewood board, refinished in daphne blue, with a Super Distortion in the bridge.
It now has David White "Old Glory" pickups (the originals weren't great so I traded them in) and a Callaham trem block (the original arm hole stripped). I'm not a Strat man so it doesn't get played, but I won't sell it.
Looked amazing, and I loved it for a long time (only thing I did at that age )
But with hindsight - crap, suspect it was plywood, pretty certain the pickups weren't hum bucker - they were certainly microphonic and it sounded nothing like my (real) Les Paul!
Encore Strat that was in bits.
I sprayed it green and assembled it the best I could, although I had no idea the pick ups went in any order, so god knows what order they went back in.
Oh, and the 5 way selector switch only worked in a couple of positions.
Other than that it was peachy.
This thing weighed a ton (I recently discovered that's because the body is MDF!) and had a really high action (in 1991 I didn't know what a set up involved). I learned my first riffs on it and played it in school music competitions alongside a friend who went on to quite a successful career in music.
After about 18 months with the Rockster I upgraded to a Squier Strat. To be honest I always thought the graphics on the Rockster were gimmicky and was happier later in my teens to be toting a more sober looking axe. Since around 1995 the Rockster gathered dust at my parents' house. At some point in the 2000s my bro managed to knacker the cheap tremolo block and the guitar fell into a sad state of disrepair.
In the last few weeks though, the Rockster came back into my life as my parents brought it over with a few other childhood possessions taking up space at theirs (including my violin). I stripped it of its (very cheap and nasty) hardware and have had a luthier put a new bridge, tuners and knobs on it (photo below). I should take delivery of it this weekend and am looking forward to playing it again, more than 25 years after first strumming a chord on it. Should be nicely set up too - turns out it does have a truss rod after all, albeit one that requires neck removal to adjust.
Will be interesting to hear what the extremely inexpensive pickups sound like through my Brunetti Singleman! The Rockster actually came with a tiny, tinny crappy amp. In very early 1992 I realised I needed a new amp more than a new guitar and for about a year played this Rockster through a little Marshall Lead 20 which sounded great and i now regret selling circa 96. Every other 'beginner' guitar I had (Squier Strat, Epiphone Les Paul) I got rid of. I'm glad I kept this one. Everyone has to start somewhere.
I think if I ever come across it again I would buy it back. However the kid who bought it was a bit, er, wayward and I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up as splinters or l a pile of ash.
https://www.facebook.com/benswanwickguitar
Was way, way better than I gave it credit for. I pretty much ruined it in a painting/modding attempt and it is no more.
I've had it set up properly and had the stock pickups switch out and it sounds quite nice actually. Cleans are pretty nice. I still use it now for teaching and its my most sentimental asset as its 20 years old now.