This year, the american guitarist, Mary Kaye would have been 102 years old, and she is most famous for her very good looking Fender Stratocaster.
Fender has now, in the Vintera III series, reissued her 1958 Strato, and that means: Desert Sand colour with Gold fittings, Maple-Neck and some very special 1958 pickups. The finish is sadly not Nitro, but is well applied and look very, very good. The neck feels nice and the fret-ends don't cut your handske. The Fender decal is applied over the laquer which gives a nice impression. The sound of the pickups are first class, but I can't find any information on, what is special with these 1958 models, but the sure looks different to the pickups of the bothers in this series. Setup is fine, direct from the Box, and it plays like a first class Stratocaster... BUT: Somebody in the Fender factory had a very bad idea. Trying to give the frets the same golden shine as the rest of the fittings, the frets was laquered with a tinted laquer, and that was to 60% peeling off, before the guitar reached me as Thomann customer... That looks terrible on the otherwise beautiful flamed maple, and I have tried to remove the rest, but that is not possible, so now I have laquer on 10% of the frets... THAT IS REALLY SILLY AND LOOKS BAD.... You just can't laquer guitar frets..!!!! Bad QC, Fender..!!!
A wonderfull guitar with one terrible mistake...!!! And Thomann didn't catch it either... Dubble bad QC