Fender Billy Corgan Stratocaster Electric Guitar  

First the obvious. The guitar has three humbucking DiMarzio pickups - three of the quietest pickups I've ever heard on any instrument, by the way. It has custom switching that allows you to blend the pickups in some cool ways. It is a hardtail with the string-through body, and it has two string trees for better sustain. The nut is a synthetic bone. It has jumbo frets and a pale maple neck without the tint and coating that necks carry today. The body has a thinner, old-style finish, and is a heavier wood than normally found in a strat. Comes with the also seperately available Fender "vintage tweed" case.

The fit and finish on this guitar are perfect. Just perfect. This is an American strat artist model, so this is to be expected. The fretwork is very nice, the finish on the matte black is really impressive in person. Other than that, it's the same high quality you would normally expect from a USA Fender.

Amazing value - this can replace several different guitars with the tones you can pull out of it. The pickups and switching allow you to pull anything from really trebly scorching leads to very heavy lower tones. In particular I like what they did with the switching. All these pickups are humbucking - the 2 and 4 positions on the 5 position switch give you the full middle pickup, which is a DiMarzio Chopper, but also blends the inside or outside coil of the bridge or neck pickup, respectively. This gives you the ability to pull a wide array of tones that have a single coil kind of character to them. Compared to an American Standard strat, the pickups have significantly more output which really pushes tubes beautifully.

I loved this guitar immediately in so many ways. The finish feels very nice to the touch, the neck is wonderful. The frets are great - I love having the jumbo frets on this because it helps so much with bending and vibrato. Sustain for miles and miles - makes sense, because this guitar is set up completely for sustain. What they've done with the pickups and the switching is such an incredible value. You can bring most any kind of grungy, hard rock, metal tones out of it - I even played this through a blues junior and it pulled very respectable buesy tones. These pickups are a little bassier compared to single coils or a HSS configuration, something you could EQ out but personally, I go with it. They have tons of output and 'punch' which makes for amazing tone through a Marshall or similar.

This is an artist model that carries a lot of credibility because Billy actually plays this guitar on stage, night in and night out. If you look at recent clips (2008/9 and later)  you'll see him switching between the white and black one, but more often than not he's playing this guitar.

I have an American Standard which I will keep for that clean, vintagey sort of tone, but I'm going to be playing this guitar most of the time from now on.

The features on this guitar are amazing. The pickups and coil splitting lets you get any sound you could want.

So far no problems at all. I had to adjust the intonation slightly but thats no biggie after it being in a box and shipped. Frets and nice and filed smooth, and the finish is perfect. I got the olypmic white.

For how many guitars this thing could replace with its wide array of tones, this guitar is worth every penny and more.

I received this guitar a couple days ago. I purchased it from my local music store. Playing this through a mesa boogie triple rectifier i can easily go from jazz to hard rock by pickup selection and channel selection on my amp. If i crank up the gain it sounds perfect for hard rock, and if i add an overdrive i can get metal out of it. I have several guitars and this wont push that crushing metal tone like a jackson or esp with emg's but its passive and thats to be expected. You can get metal out of this though.  the clean tones out of this are perfect you can get that fender strat quacky sound as well as a more crystal less quacky tone. The fourth pickup position is all blues and its amazing, its ridiculous to be able to go from acdc to stevie ray with the flip of a switch. I always wanted a guitar i could play most styles on and i have it now.

The pickups themselves and the sounds available from the 5 position switch are truly the feature that make this guitar great.

Excellent American made quality.

Well worth the extra money over the American Standard.

I had not owned a Startocaster since the 1970's. When I decided to finally buy one again, I first purchased an American Standard Strat. I immediately had issues with getting used to some things. I didnt like the tuning issues related to a floating bridge that comes with a guitar equipped with a tremelo. I didnt like the 60Hz hum or the weak output level from the standard single coil pickups. I then decided to do more research and decided that I wanted a hard tail. Further research on the pickups led me to look at the Billy Corgan model, a hard tail Strat with some very amazing Dimarzio pickups that are actually humbuckers that look like single coils. What a great decision it was to purchase this guitar.