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The teddy bear analogy he uses himself is probably about right - it may look the same and feel the same, but it can never be "the same". He says he hated it, it made him sad, it bummed him out. But that doesn't mean Fender "failed miserably", it's all in his own mind. You just can't replace the irreplaceable element, the sentimental attachment.
I don't want to argue about this all night. I don't follow anyone on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook or Whizzbang or Snapdragon or whatever the hell they're called, I don't know how much he's had to say about this all over the internet. But I've read and heard nothing to convince me that he left Fender because they "couldn't" replace the neck on his black Strat.
Let's just agree to disagree.
watch the whole thing (it's interesting in general) but 1:25 is where he starts the discussion about it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElCa5xaay5Y
Watched the Cruz interview and wow...he doesn't believe Mayer and then he calls Rene Martinez the world most respected tech out for messing it up. Martinez was SRV's tech. So who do you believe?
Mayer's unhappiness with Fender was posted on his Twitter page back in 2014. Sadly when he went through his anti-social network phase he closed his Twitter account and never reopened it so the info was lost.
I can also completely understand how Mayer felt about the neck change "teddy bear" thing. The new neck may have been notionally the same carve, dimensions, frets etc but not actually be quite the same once attached to the body, and him knowing it was different won't have helped, after playing the original every day for a decade or whatever.
My understanding re the Fender relationship was that Mike Eldred left the custom shop and he was JM's #1 guy, which meant sticking with Fender became less attractive to Mayer. God knows it's not like he *needs* another Strat
Which seems the most realistic option
John Cruz spent weeks playing it / testing it before sending it out, and never checked the ground and didn't notice it wasn't wired up during testing, yet Mayer noticed in the second he took it out, but Cruz still sent it out to a huge artist, faulty
John Cruz sent it out totally fine and working, and either something worked loose in transit, or when John Mayer got the guitar, he asked his Rene to put a dummy coil on it / mess around with it and snagged the wire / didn't finish the job before John got hold of it. (This is where its a little tricky as in one interview (the black1 DVD) John says he got the guitar from the fedex guy, opened it, it wasn't working so put it in the freezer - (this seems unlikely behaviour for anyone, you get a broken guitar and put it in the freezer, rather than either pickup the phone and ask what's going on, or have someone look at it, or even look at it yourself), but in another interview he states that he wanted a dummy coil on it because Stevie's did, but when the coil was on he didn't like it so took it off (I'm paraphrasing).
Both situations are possible, and no-one will will really know as John Mayer will look back with story telling eyes of putting the guitar in the freezer and a magic strat coming out, John Cruz will look back with a certain level of professional pride and reputation to defend about his work not being up to spec, but it seems highly unlikely to me that a master builder would send any guitar out of the shop without noticing the ground wasn't wired up after playing it, let alone to a major artist.
Mayer didn't post a huge amount on twitter about splitting from Fender, a few comments such as "Fender, not the company it once was" but certainly nothing to suggest extreme dissatisfaction or incompetence, he's been especially tight lipped about his break with Fender in interviews, and just focusses on the story of 'it's the time for something new'.
You seem to be talking as if you know for a fact what happened eg: stating things are fact, when there is clearly a dispute there as you can see from the video, and making some pretty hard assumptions that "john thought Fender where incompetent" based on remakes such as "the neck just wasn't the same" I don't think you're anywhere near the mark on any of this.
My personal view, based on a few side stories such as around the Battle Studies time John was working with Musicman on a new "signature" style guitar for himself and maybe production run that never got out of the prototype stage and ended around the time of mid-born and raised life cycle when the PRS work started, I believe 25 prototypes where made, and Johns public frustration with the two rock ownership and subsequent dropping of two rock from his usage, is that Fender A&R just wasn't what he wanted and expected any more after the belt tightening in 2014.
He likes limited numbers of things, maybe they wouldn't end the production run on his strat, maybe they wouldn't give him the margin on the strat, maybe he wanted a new run on his strat with new colours but they didn't see the value, he did because he knew his brand was strong at the time, but who knows, unless he ever speaks about it publicly and clearly it's all just guess work.
https://reverb-res.cloudinary.com/image/upload/c_scale,w_480/v1413553003/johnmayertweet1_oalfge.jpg
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6FW4ASI_A-4J:https://twitter.com/johnmayer/status/445771194696876032%3Flang%3Den+&cd=14&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Babba babba bam bam
To be continuum....
And before commenting on it, has anyone here actually played one?
Nil Satis Nisi Optimum
totally sensible, don't like it, don't open your wallet, if enough people don't like it and it doesn't sell, it will stop existing.
I've got an appointment to try one once in stock, I'm curious, and I do like a 7.25 board.
We'll leave you in charge of a report when they land. I don't doubt they won't be great, just the visuals will take some time getting used to for me, I've been a PRS owner for 30 years now so it will take some time to get used to this configurment.