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(More customer reviews)I have a lot to say about this Fender Stratacoustic, both good and bad, so if you are seriously considering buying one, please read this entire article. Out of the box, I was somewhat shocked. The overall appearance was not very good. I routinely see better finishes even on cheap guitars. The body is one-piece black plastic or resin, with a textured finish. It's not beautiful, but it's functional. The top is plywood painted gloss black. There is white binding around the top. Out of the box, the binding looked bad. There was glue all over it, and in places the binding was rough like it had been gone over with a file, and in one place, there was some black spray paint on the white binding. Next, the neck had a very pronounced bow in it, but I was able to straighten it out with a truss rod adjustment. It needed a lot of tightening, which was worrisome, but it turned out OK. [If you are not experienced with that, have a pro do it for you.] One thing that really irked me was that one corner of the faceplate of the built-in Fishman preamp/tuner was cracked. Whoever installed it, screwed it too tight and snapped it. It still works fine, but this is unacceptable, especially for a name-brand guitar. The finish of the wood around the sound hole was rough, too. So, for cosmetic appearance, I give this guitar a C-/D+. Their final QC inspection is a joke. Luckily, playing this guitar is a whole lot better than the finish. Here's the rest of the story. As I said, the body is not impressive, but the neck, (once properly adjusted), is pretty good, although the ends of the frets are a little rough and could use some filing down (Don't do that yourself either, unless you know what you are doing). The neck feels very strat-like. The guitar came with two bridges, one high and one low, (who knows why). I replaced the high bridge with the low bridge and ended up with a very playable action, close to an electric. You may even be inspired to put on light guage strings. The intonation is spot on for acoustic wound strings. Acoustically, the sound is poor, so don't buy this guitar if you want a great sounding acoustic guitar. I only play this guitar acoustically for practice. Where it shines is playing it through an amp. Fishman makes good electronics for acoustic guitars. This one sounds great. The built-in tuner is accurate enough. One other issue I had right off the bat, while out practicing for a gig, was that I had to change the battery which is accessed through a little trap door right next to the output jack. I opened the door expecting the battery to fall out, but the battery was stuck in there. As a matter of fact, it was so stuck that I had to pry it out with a tool. The problem is that there are two little wound springs which make contact with the 9V battery, but they get caught on the battery terminals and do not easily let go. This is a poor design, and one which I cannot live with, so I had to modify the entire battery compartment, and install a standard 9V snap-on connector with a long lead wire. It's not elegant, but it works. The battery comes out easily now, but changing it is a two handed operation. The tuning heads themselves turn hard and are not smooth, but they do hold a tune. The guitar has a nice thin body and the strat-like shape and feel, which is one of the main reasons I bought it. It is very comfortable, whether you are playing standing or sitting. In spite of the poor first impression and the other flaws, I do like the guitar a lot, but for the $250 I paid, and because it's a Fender, the quality of this instrument should have been a much better.
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