The Fender Custom Shop Limited Edition Poblano Stratocaster serves up a heaping helping of rock ‘n’ roll tone. Fender broke the Scoville scale, packing the Poblano Strat with piquant hand-wound Ancho Poblano single-coil pickups, dressed in secret Custom Shop sauce for scorching tones in every position. All great chefs knows we eat with our eyes. And, the Super Heavy Relic Poblano Strat is a visual feast, featuring a lustrous nitrocellulose aged black that accentuates the alder’s golden hue, and custom relic hardware for a lived-in appearance that matches the guitar’s yesteryear vibe. Guitarists at Music Experience have a taste for the hot stuff, and the Custom Shop Limited Edition Roasted Poblano Stratocaster delivers the heat with a blistering sound and searing good looks.

Hand-wound Ancho Poblano pickups pack a punch

The kick in this Stratocaster electric guitar comes from the hand-wound Ancho Poblano pickups. These Custom Shop designs are specially engineered to offer you spicy expressive tones that get progressively hotter from neck to bridge pickup. The middle and neck pickups are tweaked across the strings to enhance your solo work, while the flat-pole bridge pickup is fashioned for punch, making your guitar work your amp hard. And Fender has curbed these spicy pickups' microphonics and preserved their open-yet-focused tone by potting them in their own "secret Custom Shop sauce".

Vintage appointments for a broken-in look and feel

While the voice of this Strat is more aggressive than some designs, the feel of the guitar is based firmly on a great vintage platform. A quartersawn maple 1951 Strat neck with "U" neck profile has the comfortable feel of some of the most sought after necks of the '50s era. You also get the tone and control that can only be achieved with Fender's American Vintage synchronized tremolo with bent-steel string saddles. Even with its big, bold personality the Ancho Poblano Strat oozes Fender purity of design in every way.

The Heavy Relic treatment delivers real-deal visuals

The Fender Custom Shop's Super Heavy Relic treatment starts with a period-correct nitrocellulose lacquer finish. Nitro finishes — standard back in the day — are significantly thinner than today's polyurethane finishes, allowing the guitar to breathe. Relic'd guitars are then put through the aging process to give you an axe that looks and feels like it's seen decades of frontline action. The process creates instruments that are spitting images of the originals. Without sneaking a look at the neck heel stamps, you'd be hard-pressed to distinguish the Fender Custom Shop Poblano Stratocaster Super Heavy Relic Strat from the real deal.

What Fender Says...

A guitar realized as limited edition and presented for the Summer NAMM event. A Stratocaster with a rich tone: great punch, warm tone but always defined, all paired with a distinctive look. An instrument that will make fall in love guitarists looking for an instrument with a vintage vibe, thanks to the 1951 “U” neck profile paired with a comfortable 9.5″ radius. The Super Heavy Relic ageing makes the guitar aesthetically very close to the recent Masterbuilt productions, while details like the beveled black pickguard and the “total black” look remind immediately the Black Stratocaster used by David Gilmour. Talking about tone we find a set of Fender Custom Shop Handwound Poblano Stratocaster Pickup, with warm and balanced tone, paired with a Vintage Modified #2 wiring (with Tone Saver Bleed on Master Volume).