Fender Highway 1 – Playing Man’s Stratocaster

fender highway one guitar view
Fender Stratocaster is among the most desired guitars in the world.

That has been the case for a long time now. Almost every guitar player, despite the genre of music they play, would absolutely love to have one of these.

There is one problem though. Strats generally cost a decent amount of money. Even the Mexican Strats, which are considered to be lower quality than those made in U.S, can be decently expensive. Fender tried to alleviate this problem in part by making Squier Stratocaster models. But those can’t even compare to the original.

Fender has been making attempts to produce an affordable Stratocaster. One such model is the Fender Highway 1. The release of this guitar raised quite a few eyebrows in the community.

Could they have seriously made an affordable Strat that sounded close to the high end ones?

It appeared so since the price was kind of in that area. But was that really the case?

Let’s find out together

When it comes to American made Stratocasters, you need to be prepared to drop a generous amount of money for a good one. With Fender Highway 1, this changed for a while.

[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxuCbnbUyCo”][/su_youtube]

The guitar didn’t step outside of the established Stratocaster framework, but it did bring some solutions many found to be better than what can be found on regular American Fenders. That was pretty odd considering this guitar cost only a fraction of the price. However, there had to be a catch.

Features

  Features

The body of the guitar is pretty much the same thing you can find on any American Stratocaster. We are talking alder body and the good old Strat shape. The finish, however was different.

Classic American Stratocaster body

Fender used satin lacquer instead of their usual choices for this particular model. The neck was the standard maple design with rosewood or maple fretboards and 22 medium Jumbo frets.

Alnico III single coil pickupsHardware came in form of a steel Vintage Style Synchronized Tremolo bridge on one side and a great set of tuners on the other. Electronics were completely redesigned, featuring Alnico III single coil pickups which were much hotter than usual. So far so good, right? There is one catch, though. Quality control applied to Fender Highway 1 completely surprised loyal Fender fans.

Some guitars would arrive with the bridge off axis, while others had similar issues with different components. Even though these instances were rare, that’s the type of stuff that just doesn’t happen to Fender.

Sound- Icon

  Performance

Quality control aside, the tone this guitar produces is just incredible. The range of the Alnico III pickups is borderline unbelievable. Whole frequency range is quite dynamic, and you can hear the saturation in every segment of the frequency scale.

[su_audio url=”https://musicskanner.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/2011-Fender-Highway-One-Stratocaster-Demo.mp3″]

Sound demo

Alnico III single coils are hot output pups. They have been purposely overwound and the results are what every Strat fan dreams about.

On top of a great sound, the playability of Fender Highway 1 didn’t suffer compared to the more expensive American Strats. That is something most people were worried about. Maple fretboard with medium Jumbo frets is still the magic combination.

Whatwelike

  What we like

It seems that Fender created a way better guitar than they planned to. Fender Highway One can go head to head with just about any Stratocaster in production, despite its lower price.

Whatwedontlike

  What we don’t like

Questionable quality control is something no one expected from Fender. However, it is what it is. You will definitely have to inspect these guitars closer, and look at every detail.

Everything considered

Guitar Neck and tunersFender Highway 1 is one of the best Stratocaster models Fender has ever built. It’s not the best sounding one, but the value for the money ratio is off the charts. It was designed to be a playing man’s Strat, but it turned into something completely different. The guitar is nearly as good as any American Strat you can get at the moment.

It’s way better than Mexican ones, and yet it ended up being cheaper. Considering all the benefits of this guitar, we can forgive quality control failures which occurred from time to time. Getting stuck on those would blind us.

1 thought on “Fender Highway 1 – Playing Man’s Stratocaster”

  1. I have owned and traded Fender guitars for 40 years. I remember when you could go to the pawn shops in the 1970’s and buy guitars that people dream about today for a few hundred dollars. I have owned many great playing guitars in my day. I think the Hwy one guitars play as good as any of those. There is just something special about the Hwy one guitar. It just comes alive in your hands. It seems the more you play it. the sound just becomes magical.

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