An Unusual Strat! | Fender Japan Michiya Haruhata Stratocaster Trans Pink + Caribbean Blue Reviews

welcome back troglodytes to your daily dose of guitar information the trogly's guitar show many a moons ago we unboxed a stratocaster that i challenged you guys to reach a certain amount of likes and then i would buy the complete set of the currently offered ones today is the day i make good on my promise you might be wondering huh why why only one box don't worry i just unbox the other ones for the sake of time so today we finally review the michia haruhata stratocaster he was actually japan's first endorsed guitarist by fender i believe that was back in 2002. and his first signature guitar from what i could find was this really cool like see-through blonde finish it was a custom shop and since then he's had many a different iterations these ones are fender japan made so they're japan exclusives you can't buy them in the us you have to import them yourself pay import duties taxes crazy shipping costs etc but seeing as i have a mainly american audience you probably haven't heard this guy's name before so he's a guitarist for the band tube but he does so much more than that but his band is a japanese pop rock band now it can fall into a bunch of different categories like power pop but don't get turned off by the weird pop or whatever his music really tells a story i especially like his more solo work and his works with other bands it's like melodic it can be very hard fast hitting it can also be soft like sometimes even has some sexy sacks in his song so he's got just everything going on here whenever i listen to music being a guitarist i like to listen to stuff that is guitar heavy and guitar influenced and that's exactly what his is so if nothing else from this video type in michiaharohata on youtube and check some stuff out because he's been active in that band tube since 1985 so he is a big deal over in japan so let's go ahead and check out his new signature guitars well one of these was actually released in 2018 the one that we unboxed was actually fairly newer but i just never heard of these other ones until that one but here we go this is the color i did not unbox i wanted to start with that one so it was something a little bit new but don't worry that other one's sitting over there so what makes his signature guitar so interesting is the fact that it's got the reverse 70s style fender headstock so that means it's this big giant clunky version it's what he likes but then this one being released back in 2018 it is blue and there's a bunch of different things that's different between these two offerings that are currently available from fender japan but personally i think i like this one i mean this is a gorgeous quilt top ah yes i mean it's even got a little bit of movement that's the problem with quilt tops the more extreme you get with them the less movement you get in the figuring but you can tell that is a very very thin veneer we'll see that over on the workbench if i decide to tear this particular one apart but as far as being a stratocaster what makes it unique is obviously the top that we were just talking about the unique finish it's an hsh setup with a perloid pickguard you even have abalone inlays on the fretboard but not only that holy cow they did it on the side of the neck too they never do that that's really cool and then of course this is a locking floyd rose type system it's goto branded made in japan but now you might be curious what's the back look like it's pretty nice this one i believe it's an ash body if i remember correctly then you just get kind of a satin finished maple neck on here so that is a first look at this one now let's go ahead and grab our other one because i told you guys this would be just a big video you've reached the milestone of likes so i'm paying it back to ya i got two of the blue ones because i couldn't decide no this was actually a new guitar day purchase similar to that geno jazz bass unfortunately it had to be forfeited due to uh he needed to put his money somewhere else so i helped him out in that case so yeah we've got two of them here which one is your favorite i would say they're very close like they are both beautiful guitars and the quilting is very similar like this one's actually a little bit more heavily done but i think i like this one because it's a little bit more uniform and wide that's the way i like my flame and quilt tops wide so if you're interested in either of these you can check them out on my website after my review trogleysguitarshow.com but now for the one that i meant to grab we have this one so we've seen this before but this time it's like a more very pin stripey flame like it's got some wide factors to it but you're also going to notice there are some significant differences just between these two so the first very obvious thing is this has a pickguard this new one does not it's still the exact same pickups as far as the humbuckers and single coils go you do have fancy electronics on these that we'll talk about later and it's the same five-way toggle switch but you'll also notice side output jack on this one versus the jack on the top so when i first saw this one i thought it was red it's actually technically trans pink i mean you can kind of see it on the back side of the guitar that it's pink but the top is definitely red so if you don't want a pink guitar i really wouldn't let that scare you i think most people if they looked at this they would say it's red but i thought michia was like some 80s hair metal guy and some of his stuff does get heavy don't get me wrong but based on my first impressions i thought what his music was going to be was completely different from what his guitar told me but some other differences here obviously black inlays on here instead of abalone oh i did not realize that it's obvious when you look at it this one has the rosewood fretboard this one's maple but that also changes up your construction of the neck so you have the skunk stripe over here whereas this is just a straight up maple neck because you know they don't have to do that process because they have a fretboard on this one so the wood color is a little bit different on the next but that's just going to vary example to example and of course the other obvious thing is flame versus quilt i think they are both very cool guitars which one do i want to continue this review and documentation of despite this being the older one i like the blue one a little bit better but that side output jack on that other stratocaster is pretty cool but before we do that i want to talk a little bit more about his other signature guitars so as you've already learned these are the fender made in japan production models that were supposed to be a little bit cheaper more accessible for people to buy but what else is out there well they're mainly custom shops in very limited numbers so that first one in 2002 i think it was that see-through blonde as i was telling you before but in 2005-2006 there's a black one that is like very zemitis like themed because it has a metal pick guard on it and it's engraved and they also did the engraving on the jack plate in a whole bunch of other locations on the guitar and it's got an iron cross on the front which is you know kind of cool but the pickup configuration was different on that one that was an hss setup with a floyd and of course it had his trademark reverse 70s style headstock and then in 2011 there was a custom shop version of this guitar that is why this thing exists it's a japan made exclusive version of his custom shop one so if you're kind of a guitar snob guy and you don't want to have a made in japan guitar or you want the highest end that you can possibly get yeah you can find a custom shop version of this guitar if that is what you're wanting but they're very rare and to be honest i don't know if there's more because it's so hard to find them on google search because most of them were very limited custom shop releases and whenever you type in michia haruhata stratocaster it's these guys that show up so without any further ado let's go ahead and throw this michi haruhata stratocaster onto the workbench and take an individual look at its parts and specs inside the harahata stratocaster actually ran across a couple of surprises so with all the pickups and everything out of here it's just a humbucker single coil humbucker route so it's not a big huge swimming pool under here so if you have a big idea let's do a triple humbucker stratocaster no you can't do that without some additional routing however i did not notice this until i took it apart these holes in the pickguard aren't actually used at all the pickups are still attached directly to the body there's some guys that say that sounds better than having it attached to a pickguard so even though mr pink over here doesn't have a pickguard it's still attached the exact same way as this one despite this one having the pickguard so that's just kind of interesting but here you can see that is just a super paper thin veneer it's not a top by any means it's just something put on the front to make it look pretty but you can see the ash body in the pickup cavities as well as on the back just the fact that these things have ash bodies is kind of cool because fender kind of stopped using those but then again this was before they made that announcement well at least when this model was released anyways i really love the fact that this kind of has like an artificial wooden binding to it because the top doesn't actually go over this contoured edge so it just kind of gives you like this blue border that you only see it in like certain lighting situations i just wanted to make sure that i pointed that out so now let's talk pickups air norton in the neck texas special in the middle and a dimarzio fred pickup in the bridge here's what the air norton looks like so it mounts into this with screws directly into the body as we were just talking about but not only do you have the springs for the screws but he wanted them to stay put so they have little foam blocks on the back too that is extra secure so if you hate how sometimes humbuckers can move back and forth a little bit this one should be pretty darn secure they also did that for the texas special middle pickup and the fred it's labeled the dp-193 apparently these are supposed to be very extra responsive to touch like if you pick very softly it's gonna pick that up if you pick rough it's gonna start to break up i guess joe satriani is very famous for using one of these too i just thought that was an interesting name dimarzio fred it's got the hex pull pieces too but again that's the same in both of these models so artist signature guitar it looks fantastic and it has great pickups and the price really isn't that bad on these brand new they're 178 200 nah just kidding that's in yen so roughly 1700 us or so and get this we actually have cts pots in here too so this is good quality electronics usually that's the downfall of the made in japan stuff they build the guitars fantastically they have great quality control but unfortunately they're just kind of forced to put cheapy electronics in here but this one that's not the case as far as the controls themselves go you have two volumes and a master tone on this one this controls just the middle pickup so if you don't want your middle pickup on ever you just turn that off then whatever position has the middle pickup in it at all will not sound this controls the neck and bridge pickup together so that's a little bit different from a regular stratocaster and this is just a master tone i guess it's more accurately portrayed as a push push pot here so when you have this up it is adding the neck position into whatever one you're on so this is neck so it's not going to do anything this is neck and middle it's not going to do anything but since this is the middle position that's going to add your neck to it so it's just like that position but then this position right here is going to allow you to have all three pickups on at the same time i don't think i've heard an hsh setup guitar like that before and then of course your bridge you can now get a traditional gibson middle pickup tone so lots of tonal opportunities on this one with that little thing right there but the pick guard itself is one of those moto pick guards so it's like a perloid material you've got the metal knurled knobs which you don't normally see on a stratocaster that's good for grip and you'll notice hey our pickup selector switch is also chrome cool as far as the output jack very basic this one is on the front whereas this other one it is located on the side personally i really like side output jack guitars but this blue it just called me and the fretboard but we'll get to that in a minute so this is a japan goto branded type of floyd rose i don't know a lot about floyd's i can't tell you what's good bad or ugly about this thing honestly i probably won't even use it at all and it was one of the reasons why i kind of delayed this review a little bit because i'm just not a big fan of floyd's because the way i play i don't have a use for it but you know if you're a talented guitarist it's got it instead of the regular tram system that most stratocasters have we'll take a look at that on the back in a minute now that that mess of wires is tamed and all installed back again i wanted to show you what i was talking about earlier so these are left exposed now you might be wondering why doesn't that look awful once you know that they're just empty it's so even though it's directly mounted just like these you can still adjust the height of your pickup even though there's a pick guard covering it you just gotta get yourself a tiny little screwdriver like what you find on a gibson multi-tool or you know whatever multi-tool sometimes that's a little bit thick i think this one's a little bit larger than normal the first guitar i ever saw that on was the geno jazz bass and i was confused but yeah that's how you do it it's just so you get the aesthetic with the functionality cool speaking of functionality let's see what these things read so our bridge pickup pretty hot 7.78 k ohms our middle position 5.96 and the neck position here whoa 12.36 okay so these guys together 4.1 ish and now these two 3.76 then using our push push pot here it kind of shows you what i was talking about before so this in theory should bring about half the reading yep 5.6 because that's now these two together and then this is every single pickup on that seems about right whereas you take that off it goes up a little bit very cool all right finally moving on from the ash body with the maple veneer we get to the rosewood fretboard we do have 22 frets on here which a lot of the made in japan stuff only has 21 they are medium jumbo in size so they've got a lot of meat to them as far as the radius it's nine and a half so not quite vintage not quite ultra modern just somewhere right in between and it's the regular 25 and a half inch scale length this has to be the nicest fretboard i have ever seen on a fender guitar like this is a brand new guitar but yet it has that i've been used a little bit look to it like it's nice and dark it seems like it's been conditioned but i did not touch this one i just wanted to leave it just the way it was that is a great color i love the abalone inlays it works really well with the official finish called caribbean blue and that's just a beautiful finish right especially matching it with the quilt because you know it just reminds you of the water in general i feel this guitar really encompasses my favorite songs of his but again if you prefer maple necks you can go with the pink one i decided to look at my other stratocaster because sometimes you get some that has really cool colors and figuring in it and this one almost looks like they mix matched abalone with mother of pearl but you really gotta view it from like this particular angle to start to see any blue or like down like this so i think it is abalone despite very clearly almost looking like another pearl and of course don't forget you've got the abalone inlay on the side as well but the fund is not in there let's continue on our next backs here we have a rather skinny nut width of 1.63 inches and that increases to 2.03 by the 12. but our first fret neck depth is 0.94 that sounds pretty big right but stays very consistent only 0.95 by the 12th so this actually has a soft v neck profile shape so what that means to you is think a c shape but it has like a very small hump on the back just to make it fit into your hand a little bit better there are some guys that swear by v shape necks like they make hard v next to where you can really see the pronounced v but this one you can just barely feel that it's there it fits your hand pretty good and it makes this neck feel pretty chunky it's not giant by any means but it is a good sized feeling neck let's check it out on the contour gauge so here you can kind of see what i'm talking about so here is the first fret you see how it comes up to like a very soft point now a hard v would be like a complete v shape you'd be able to see it but it just kind of comes to a light point but then by the 12th fret it almost completely disappears it just feels like a pretty nice chunky neck profile when most people fret a guitar they kind of have like a little pocket right here so that's designed just to fit but then when you're soloing up here you don't necessarily need the big hard v shape like you can still feel a little bit of a bump but this is not a crazy v by any means but you can definitely feel that on the back here but to continue on this does not have a regular nut this is a locking nut system this one actually has a tension bar over here to kind of help get the strings in place but this is all for the floyd rose so you just remove this and then you got that little block that holds the strings in place so in theory that's all locked off then you can use your trim as much as you want do the dive bombs and it should stay relatively in tune so before you tighten these down with an allen key you tune it up to pitch the best you can and then you tighten these down and then you continue on your tuning with these fine tuners down here so that's what it'll look like when you're all done but yeah here's that strange goofy headstock 70s style meaning it's just big and then it's reversed one of the few guitars you can really do that on like they've done reverse head stocks before but this is the first one i've seen that's a big big 70s style that doesn't mean there's not other models it's just the first one i've ran across you can certainly find the smaller headstocks but what is so absolutely bizarre and strange is the playing profile of this i mean look at that fender headstocks always kind of go back a bit and then are angled this way instead of the gibson direction which is this way so whenever i have a reversed headstock style guitar it just makes me think my headstock's broken like because gibson's go snap like that i'm just so used to playing those things i just thought it was funny that is something that's a bit strange when you're playing it but now moving on to the back side the back plate on these is a little bit different because this trim system requires like a little jutting out point right here you can see what i'm talking about here on the other one so not your typical back plate on a stratocaster and this one over here has a back plate because you don't have a pick guard so you have to get to the electronics somehow where's this blue one it's just left alone but what's nice is this is actually recessed into the body so it's not gonna like you know get caught up on your belt buckle or something whereas this it does sit proud on the body so that's another little difference that you might not have noticed at first but man i love the wood grain on this one nice and straight a little bit wavy over here but then in the cutaway you get the ring edge it just looks so nice but this is what the trim system itself looks like you've got three springs stocked from the factory looks like a little brass block right there and you tighten the arm down from the front i believe but as far as the neck plate they're just blank on both of them they don't have a signature or anything and you can kind of see the v-neck shape profile forming even just right here you see how they have a v-shape right there and then the light just kind of reflects off the top yeah that's some pretty nice wood grain too i really like that and you can kind of see that same phenomenon on this neck as well but again we've got a skunk stripe on this one due to the construction of it yeah there you can see that v-shaped neck profile but finally the back of the headstock we've got our serial number made in japan and you have a silk screen of his signature and that's the same on both iterations including the f-stamped tuners that's another 70s style thing what i really like about these is they're pretty easy to grip because instead of being a small button they're kind of like the shower style ones where they're a little bit wider in feel but at the same time that's kind of bad because they kind of get very close to each other it's just something you'd get used to i'm sure as far as the weight this one weighs 8 pounds 3.2 ounces i guess we should weigh the other one too this one's almost the exact same that's kind of freaky let's go ahead and plug the blue one in and hear how it sounds [Music] [Applause] okay let's go ahead and run through these tones pardon the tuning i did the best that i absolutely could i'm not the best with the floyd rose type systems so let's start with our neck pick up here [Music] okay the thing i notice about this entire guitar is it almost sounds active like do you guys hear that brightness to this and you'll really notice that when we swap over to the bridge position [Music] so [Music] now we'll try just the middle [Music] so [Music] [Music] okay now let's try the neck and middle position [Music] bridge and middle [Music] just trying to play similar stuff so you can hear you know the combinations between the two and how they sound different [Music] [Music] okay now i can't forget you've got those secret positions here so that really only matters in the all the way down bridge pickup position and these two together so we'll go ahead and activate that [Music] here's what it sounds like with all three pickups on [Music] very glassy [Music] um [Music] so [Music] hey [Music] so a very versatile and bright sounding stratocaster let's go ahead and try some distorted tones [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] um [Music] [Music] music [Music] so [Music] i find with the distortion that middle pickup makes everything sound so fat i mean here's the neck position [Music] but you add that middle pickup in there just gets angry [Applause] especially when you just have all three of them on here [Music] uh [Music] now that we know all about the michi aharohata signature stratocaster was it worth it at the end of the day yeah i think this was definitely worthy of its own separate review and demo it is an absolutely gorgeous guitar and i think for that reason you should own it just in itself but as far as like would i actually own this if i was just strictly a player not necessarily a collector probably not i could not keep this thing in tune at all i mean i did the best i could on the playing demo because i blocked off the trap but that's probably more so on me i don't really know what i'm doing like i've watched the videos i know you tuned the strings this one that one that this one this was that but i still can't get these things to ever stay in tune so that's more so on me i'm sure if you take this to a professional place to get it set up that would be fine but i don't have a use for floyd rose in my music but the tones out of this were very fascinating as i was saying in the playing demo it almost sounds like an active pickup it's so bright and attacking i think that's kind of what they were talking about with this particular pickup it really does change just how you pick it but i mean that's true for all pickups but this one even more so i had to lower that one down a little bit it was just a little bit too crazy as far as other alternatives to this in case you don't want to import one i mean you could build a parts caster that would be very similar you just have to get an ash body and find a way that they would give you a maple veneer that looks similar to this have it routed for a floyd rose and yeah you can buy these pickups separately there's nothing you really can't get that wouldn't be super custom except for your abalone inlays i think that might be a little bit trickier especially on the side because most manufacturers don't do that but i'm sure warmth could build you one if you wanted to and you know freaky reverse headstock now if you build a parts caster it's not going to hold and go up in value like these guys will so there's kind of a trade-off do you pay a lesser price and build it your own or do you buy the limited edition that will eventually go out of production and then become more valuable potentially so troglodytes let me know in the comments section did i review the wrong one did you really want to see the red for me it's all about the blue the red doesn't do as much for me but i think it depends on what kinds of music you're trying to play alright thank you for tuning in today don't forget to like comment and subscribe and we will catch you tomorrow on the next episode take care [Music] as always if you're interested in being the next owner of one of these demo guitars you can check them out on my website trogleysguitarshow.com there's some links in the description [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] foreign do [Music] right there hey so you

Channel: The Trogly's Guitar Show

Views: 32,208

Rating: 4.8973718 out of 5

Keywords: the trogly's guitar show, trogly, trogley, gibson, gibson les paul, fender, michiya haruhata, michiya haruhata wild hearts, michiya haruhata straight to my heart, michiya haruhata stratocaster, michiya haruhata live, fender michiya haruhata stratocaster, fender michiya haruhata, fender japan michiya haruhata signature, fender michiya haruhata stratocaster trans pink, fender japan michiya haruhata stratocaster, blue michiya haruhata stratocaster, red michiya haruhata stratocaster

Id: NdYte17Cw60

Length: 35min 23sec (2123 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 20 2021