Tom Delonge Fender Strat 2023 Reissue Review

what's going on everybody Eric barassa here today and I'm very excited because today is the release day of the fender limited edition Tom Delong Strat uh so this just got announced very recently rumors have been happening for a little while but it was only about a week ago that Fender and Tom Delong officially said July 25th is the release date and as of yesterday you couldn't even find these for pre-order online uh but today this morning when I went on Guitar Center's website I was able to find you can actually order these but they did not show them in stock at any of the stores so what I did was I drove to the Guitar Center that would be the most likely to have one this is what happened what's up everybody we're here at Guitar Center uh in an undisclosed location somewhere in DFW and we're gonna go in right at opening we've got three minutes till they open we're gonna see if they've got one of these Tom DeLonge straps and here we are less about 10 minutes later it's 1107 seven minutes after they opened got me a surf green Tom Delong opened it up looks pretty good let's take it home and and test it out all right so let's take a look they didn't even have it on the shelf or out [Music] foreign [Music] so what we're going to find out today the question I'm asking is is this made in Mexico Strat worth the 1300 price tag actually mine was twelve hundred dollars plus tax though everyone had been saying 12.99 uh mine was 11.99 at Guitar Center so is this guitar worth 1200 US Dollars uh compared to a a normal made in Mexico Strat which I think goes for about 870 dollars or so is it worth the extra 350 or so to get this special limited edition Strat and is it worth uh paying extra for this when you could do it to an older version of a fender made in Mexico Strat like I have done with my 90 Strat and uh we're gonna see if this guitar is better than that and whether it's worth it for you to buy this one or to maybe do the mods yourself so let's check out the tones on this guitar with clean and Distortion I'm going to be running through my Friedman runt 20 amp with most of the toe knobs sitting right about 12 o'clock and then for a distortion I'm using my Carl Martin Greg house lick box [Music] [Applause] thank you [Music] thank you foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] foreign okay so here are my thoughts after uh playing this guitar for a little while and getting my hands on it and then comparing it to my original Strat that I tommed along andized for for years now just for the record I want to share that I am a total Blink 182 fanatic there is no other band I've listened to in my life more than blink 182. I kid you not I listen to Blink 182 on almost a weekly basis and when I'm really heavy into it uh pretty much every day I'm listening to Blink 182 or boxcar racer or plus 44 or Angels and Airwaves one of those bands uh that the guys from blank have have done so I also owned a Daphne Blue version of the Tom Delong Strat in the early 2000s and I either paid just a few hundred bucks for it or somebody gave it to me I think my friend Kendall back in high school actually gave me this that Strat and uh and I know brand new back then I think there were 450 or 500 and and I uh stupidly sold it in college so I could get something else but you know you didn't know back then that it was going to be worth a couple thousand dollars today to to hold on to it so um so having that history having owned a Tonda long guitar before being intimately familiar with the sounds of Blink 182 and Tom Delong uh I can say that this is a a well-made guitar and I find that Fender guitars made in Mexico or made in America are very consistent with build quality so I'd like to say I got a good one I got lucky and got a good one that they hadn't even taken out of the box yet today but the reality is um pretty much any time I've taken a strat just off the rack it's it's really well made uh there's no fret edges the the the edges of the Frets are nice and smooth when which is something you find with import guitars a lot of times the Frets will like stick you and and scrape you as you move up the fretboard the fretboard is very smooth uh it's a very light finish on the back I mean almost non-existent uh if maybe there isn't a finish but if there is it's it's so light um that it feels like it's not even there the fretboard feels great the only thing I had to do was I had to there's a little too much relief in the neck so I had to tighten the truss rod to straighten the neck and get the action kind of where I wanted it um but other than that I mean there's no scratches there's no dings I love this upgraded Bridge it's kind of like the American Strat style bridge that they began doing uh back in the early 2000s that's my favorite version of the Fender Strat bridge I also like that this these tuning pegs like my Clapton Strat it has it where you uh clip the the top you stick it in and then you tighten it rather than sticking it through bending it and tightening it I like this a lot better uh and then let's see what else I mean this is a nice touch the little Tom Delong symbol on the back I haven't even taken the plastic off of it yet so it's it's in great shape it looks perfect it feels great but the question is is it worth the twelve hundred dollar price tag and as a Blink 182 fanatic I want to say yes but I gotta tell you I I don't think so um it depends on what you're after though so what I would recommend is you could get a used Fender made in Mexico Strat for uh last time I checked they were they were in about about 400 450 dollars I'm gonna guess 500 bucks now you could get a 500 used made in Mexico strap and the wood at least on my 90s Strat here has aged really well over the last 20 to 30 years and so if you can find an older one they're usually even less expensive and uh and the way the wood ages is fantastic so I'd rather have this neck that's on my Mexican Strat than on this Tom Delong strap because this this one's not broken in yet it still feels brand new which you would think is a good thing but I prefer a neck that is a little bit more broken in uh and then the the other thing is um you know an Invader pickup I think is about 110 dollars right now uh us and then you get one of these um pickguards custom pick guards with just for the single you can see I've I later added uh this neck pick up here because I just wanted that versatility but you can get one of these kinds of pick guards for maybe about 30 dollars we'll just Round Up say 40 to be safe so 150 for the pickup and the pick guard and then you need a 500K tone pot which those are cheap maybe 20 bucks so all in all you're looking 150 maybe 170 dollars plus 500 for the Strat so uh 675 it's about 700 bucks for about seven hundred dollars you could make your own if you're okay with doing the soldering yourself I will tell you I'm not good with soldering but I installed this pickup myself and it's not very difficult to install a single humbucker pickup in a guitar if you have more pickups it becomes a little more complex but a guitar like this it's pretty easy to learn how to do it on your own um As Long As You Are flexible with the color that you get right surf green in a made of Mexico Strat I don't think is super easy to find so if you're wanting that or Daphne blue Daphne blue I'm pretty sure the only way you can get it is with the Tom Delong Strat I don't I don't know if I've seen it on any other strap but anyway my point is just pick the color you want find find a used Mexican Strat and then you're probably not gonna be able to get that 70s headstock uh that's kind of one of the other distinctions about this guitar really the only thing that makes this different than a regular Strat is you have the Invader pickup the perloid pickguard and that 70s headstock and then on this version you get the Tom Delong name plate on the back you know that's essentially the difference so thinking about what New Mexico made in Mexico strats cost back in the early 2000s you were looking at probably 350 to 400 so for the Tom de longstrat to be 450 or 500 you're looking at a 50 to 100 difference um so now with new made of Mexico strats being like 870 dollars close to 900 which blows my mind because they just shot up after the pandemic in price um you know I think they were six hundred dollars pre-pandemic and I mean that was only what three or four years ago and so now coming out of that um the the prices have just gone up so astronomically I could see this guitar compared to a made in Mexico Strat new today maybe it goes for a thousand maybe ten fifty but eleven ninety nine which is what I paid for this I I don't personally think it's worth it if you're just getting a guitar for you to play now the one way I would say this guitar is worth purchasing is if you are going to hold on to it to resell later if this is going to be anything like the original Tom Delong Strat which sold for 450 to 500 20 years ago and is now Worth close to two thousand dollars this thirteen hundred dollar guitar I could very easily see getting up in that sixteen hundred eighteen hundred dollar range within the next couple of years especially since it's a limited edition run I have a feeling these are going to sell out so if you want one I would get one soon take good care of it so that in a few years if you decide to resell it you can more than likely uh enjoy the guitar for a few years and then make a little bit of money off of it that's what I intend to do this with with this guitar I don't intend to keep it because as pretty as it is I I love my uh Tom my homemade Tom Delong Strat that that I've just made myself all right so anyway those are my thoughts on the new new Tom Delong re-issued Strat for from fender for 2023 uh have you played one yet have you tried it did you buy one uh did you have fomo were you like I think it's overpriced but I gotta get one because I just I have to um or did you say nah I'm gonna pass on on this let me know your thoughts uh about this guitar oh final thing um I think it's a little bit of a one-trick pony if you're playing punk rock or you're playing metal awesome it's great for that uh and it's great for riffige I think the offender strap with a Seymour Duncan Invader is the best riff machine there's no better tone than that to me in terms of distortion uh however if if you're doing a lot of lead guitar and you want to get some really nice searing lead tones um or you want to get a good clean tone this probably is not the guitar for you especially when it comes to clean tones because you'll notice like even when I recorded a clean sound um it was a little bit distorted now I'm playing through a 20 watt amp which breaks up very easily anyway but I've noticed even with louder amps The Invader pickup it has a hard time staying clean because it's such a high output pickup uh so you're not going to get these incredible shimmering um strat-like tones with with this guitar you're going to get good punk rock sounds and and heavy metal sounds and uh and it's a great riff machine that's what I can say about that all right you guys I'm Eric probably break down new Blink 182 songs as they come out stay tuned for for more of that be sure and check the link in the description below if you're interested in my uh 90 day guitar course to learn to finally understand everything you're playing on the guitar with scales arpeggios where the notes are on the fretboard you're going to commit 10 minutes a day to the program and by the end of 90 days You're Gonna know basically everything you need to know about the guitar so you're not just playing random notes and random chords and scales and hoping it sounds good but instead you're going to actually understand how the Guitar Works uh okay all right you guys I will see you in the next time [Music]

Channel: Eric Bourassa

Views: 15,205

Keywords: eric bourassa, tom delonge, fender, strat, stratocaster, signature, reissue, 2023, limited edition, surf green, review, demo

Id: VCpj1Gi9et8

Length: 19min 34sec (1174 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 25 2023