Fender Black Paisley Stratocaster HSS

The Fender Black Paisley Stratocaster HSS is a modified Strat with a humbucker bridge, wrapped in a swirling black paisley finish.

This guitar is the latest model to showcase the black paisley finish, a dark and semi-psychedelic new look for Fender instruments.

This 25.5" scale guitar is still a Stratocaster at heart, with a body made of alder, cut into the familiar double cut-away Strat shape. It has a maple neck topped with a rosewood fretboard, bolted into the body. The neck's modern "C" shape and urethane finish make it easier to play along its 21 medium jumbo frets.

The Black Paisley Stratocaster HSS is equipped with Standard Single-Coil Strat Middle and Neck pickups. This will give you traditional Fender tones in conjunction with the 5 position pickup selector.

Since it is in HSS (humbucker, single-coil, single-coil) configuration, the guitar is equipped with a Fender Standard Humbucking Pickup at the bridge. This modern configuration lets you use your strat as a high gain riffing and soloing machine.

Chrome hardware and its vintage style synchronized tremolo bridge rounds up its impressive looks. In my opinion, it would have been better if the fretboard was maple, and maybe have the same transparent paisley finish all the way through to the headstock. Still, this is undeniably a great looking instrument, at the opposite end of the "relic" trend that Fender seems to follow.

Price information is still unavailable as of this writing. For more information about the Black Paisley Stratocaster HSS, you can visit www.fender.com.