In the early 1980s, the music rushed into the next phase.  The listeners became to demand high fidelity in the music which was probably affected by digital media development like compact disc.

The guitars were also affected.  In such circumstance, they started to keep their eye on Stratocaster which had flexibility to modification.  Then the history of that I say “Neo-Stratization” was started.

At fist they started from pickup replacement which was represented S-S-H, and acutely accelerated by Floyd Rose tremolo unit. Then Stratocaster was not Stratocaster any longer, just a new branch of tree diagram were born in the guitar history.

Now I talk about two great guitarists who developed Neo-Stratization.

One is the genius Edward van Halen who just let them know the possibility of Stratocaster modification.  He exchanged the neck, mounted a pickup directly on the body and let them know the meaning of string locking.  These way pioneered the main street of Neo-Stratization.

The other genius is Steve Lukather.  As a studio musician, he developed Stratocaster to almighty high performance guitar.  He started to use active EMG pickups, and those guitars were welcomed by not only rock guitarists but also studio&fusion guitarists.

After several years, Neo-Strato had its peak of prosperity, but soon declined.

Sorry for long speech.

This guitar is presented on 1985 catalogue, price was 135,000JPY then. EMG SA assembly was priced 53,000JPY on the same catalogue, so its high price might be inevitable.  According to the catalogue, its body material was alder ,but it looks ash or sen(Japanese ash).  The tremolo unit is original HeadCrasher which is convenient because it doesn’t require string cutting.  3.98kg(includes strings). (Updated 2016.8.21)