Where to begin... this is a long story that spans 3 decades...
I was a kid, 16 years old, it was 1991 and I had popped down to Richmond, South West London to go to Chandler's Guitars. As I approached the store an Olympic White Strat in the shop window really caught my attention: it had a maple fretboard and a brown tortoise shell pick guard but what really got me, immediately, was that it had a large reversed CBS-style headstock, just like Hendrix used (I'm a SUCKER for all things Hendrix), but with the Fender decals the right way up, not upside down like a normal leftie neck on a rightie Strat would have... my how I drooled, I wanted it so bad but I was a kid, still in school, the label on it said Fender Custom Shop, and the price £950, which, at the time I figured I would NEVER EVER be able to afford... but the image of that guitar seared itself permanently into my mind's eye that day, but all I could do was pop into the shop and scrape enough change out of my wallet to acquire a pack of strings for my (then) trusty Washburn N3 electric (N.B. reversed Strat-ish headstock).
Fast forward: it was a cold, windy and wet late January day in Central London, 1998. Just before Christmas '97 two very close and dear family friends passed away (separate incidents), tragically young, and shortly after that (but still before Christmas) my girlfriend dumped me. It was without question the lowest period of my life so I decided that evening on my way home from work to pop into Soho Soundhouse on Charing Cross Road to buy some strings and to cheer myself up by checking out all the expensive and exotic guitars they stock, and much to my surprise I stumble upon a black USA Fender Strat with a maple fretboard and - HOLY SMOKES - a large reversed CBS-style headstock just like that Custom Shop model I'd seen all those years before. The RRP was marked as £1300 which, despite good employment at the time, was way more than I could reasonably afford, but the shop had marked it down to £850... the agony... £850 was still more than I could afford but by this time I really wanted to graduate from my trusty old Washburn to a USA Fender Strat just like my heroes, Jimi and Stevie Ray... I tried it out and it played so wonderfully, the clerk in the store came up and told me he could tell I was seriously keen on the guitar, and I whinged (pommy, comes naturally) that I'm too broke to buy it, and in response he chirps up and says "why don't you just buy it on finance?". You could have knocked me down with a feather, that had never occurred to me and while I was already in debt and averse to the idea of going even further into debt, he helped me apply there and then on the store computer, and, hahaha even more surprising to me at the time, it was approved.
That day, a handful of days before my 23rd birthday, I took a black London cab home, a brand new Fender USA Tribute Series Hendrix Voodoo Stratocaster in an awesome black tolex-covered Fender amp-logo'ed case cradled in my stunned arms.
While I've loved and I've lost over the 15 years since, that Voodoo Strat has been through thick and thin with me. It's travelled the world, it's gigged on 3 continents, it's moved to Africa with me... it's pretty much been the only constant in my life since I bought it. I love this black Voodoo Strat more than life itself, but as the years progressed it's been displaying signs of wear and tear, fantastic for the mojo, the patina of years of playing, and the feel of a truly played-in guitar, but for such a beloved item it was also sort of a concern: it was my baby, my companion, my musical muse...
A few years back I decided that I needed another Strat to help take some of the load off my Black #1, to help preserve her in her splendidly glorious middle age for as long as I could. I had other guitars, a Les Paul, a Tele, but none of them fit me and my playing so perfectly as my Strat. I could have just bought any old Strat, but by this stage I associated myself so closely to the Voodoo Strat image that I came to the conclusion that my #2 electric HAD to be a Voodoo, which made it rather a challenge because they were only made in '97/98 and were discontinued when the Hendrix family estate complained to Fender that they hadn't given permission to use the Hendrix name/image on a line of guitars, so Fender removed the Hendrix silhouette from the neck plate and rebranded the model as the '68 Reverse Stratocaster in order to use up the remaining stock of finished reversed headstock necks. As a result, these things are rare, and highly desirable... which means expensive.
Nevertheless, I was determined that, come hell or high water, I needed another Voodoo, and I knew they had come in 3 possible finishes: the black (check!), 3-tone sunburst which with a retro-fit black-white-black 3-ply pick guard would just be "oh-so-Stevie", and Olympic White which with a retro-fit 3-ply brown tortoise shell pick guard would be THE original guitar that started my obsession all those years ago.
Well... after missing out on a number of infrequent Ebay auctions - had the money, just these guitars come on so rarely and the bidding was always frenetic and ultimately I'd lose at the last minute or the price would get pushed up above US$3000 which I considered Custom Shop territory and thus too much for the guitar in question - I managed to get the 3-tone sunburst one 2 years ago, and because by this stage I wanted one of all 3 possible colours, the hunt for the Olympic White one to complete the trio started... 2 weeks ago I won the bidding on an Olympic White '68 Reverse Stratocaster, which I took delivery of today!
So a journey that started with the purchase of my #1 Black Strat in 1998 is, finally, at an end... and when I get a brown tortoise shell pick guard on the WONDERFUL new Olympic White one, the journey that started in 1991, over HALF MY LIFETIME, will come to an end... and... I'm now all out of words...
Ladies and gentlemen, it fills me with happiness and pride to present to you: #1 Black, #2 Sunburst and #3 Olympic White.
