From Guitar Player
“His favorite one is an unusual color; it’s a limited-edition finish called Sonic Grey,” Prior tells us. “Squier Bullet Strats in this finish were imported into South Africa from Indonesia. Mike bought the guitar in a shop in Cape Town because he forgot to take his black Clapton Strat with him on a visit. He actually bought two (the other Bullet Strat is Arctic White.)
“Sitting at home in Cape Town plugged into his Blackstar 3-watt amp, Mike just fell in love with it playing along to his laptop and relearning all the Genesis songs. That was him for almost all of the first lockdown because he wasn’t allowed out of Cape Town. He was stuck there. But he came back saying how much he loved this guitar.”
“It’s super lightweight; it feels like balsawood,” highlights Prior. “But I have changed the bridge/saddles and put Gotoh tuners on just to make it more reliable for the tour. Mike loves the sound of the pickups, although on a couple of these guitars I have put Fender Noiseless bridge pickups in, just in case we get any interaction with the stage's enormous 70 feet LCD screen.”
“If you want to put Gotoh tuners on you’ve got to enlarge the peghead holes,” advises Prior. “I also recut the nut and dressed the frets. I would maybe recommend upgrading the electronics to Switchcraft and CTS too. It’s about fine-tuning the guitar really.
“Mike has got so many other wonderful Strats, but he also loves using these Indonesian-made Squier Bullet Stratocasters. He can’t put the Sonic Grey one down. It’s the first guitar he wants to play every day and he uses it for some big songs in the Genesis set including “No Son of Mine” and “Mama.”
“I asked him if he’d like me to take the Squier decal off the headstock but he said he wanted it stay. Fender are probably over the moon about that!”