{"id":510,"date":"2018-07-05T18:28:27","date_gmt":"2018-07-05T18:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bunnyears.net\/guitar\/?page_id=510"},"modified":"2019-07-29T18:29:37","modified_gmt":"2019-07-29T18:29:37","slug":"fender-stratocaster-xii","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/guitar\/electric-guitars\/fender-stratocaster-xii\/","title":{"rendered":"Fender Stratocaster XII"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Year<\/strong>: 2005
\nFinish:<\/strong>\u00a0Lake Placid Blue
\nOrigin:<\/strong>\u00a0“Crafted in Japan”
\nMods:<\/strong>\u00a0Schaller straplocks
\nAcquired:<\/strong>\u00a0July 2018
\nStill owned:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes<\/p>\n

Once upon a time I saw the 12-string twin of my favorite guitar, the red sparkle ESP XJ-6.<\/a> The XJ-12 (of course) was more expensive than I expected. I later found out it was quite fair — that’s just what Japanese electric 12s go for. I missed it and I have never seen another for sale. I looked into having one custom made; it was either obscenely expensive as a factory custom or a mildly expensive mess to assemble myself. And so, a very specific yearning formed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I’ve looked at other 12s but there was always something wrong. Too expensive, too cheaply made, uncomfortable neck, wrong finish, or one weird one where the guitar was apparently kept in a shop window and therefore changed color…but only on the front. I never found The Right One. And Kat said, “If you’re going to get a guitar, get the one you really want, because otherwise, you’ll always want the one in your mind more than the one in your hands.”<\/p>\n

So I refocused, and I found the answer. I love my Strat<\/a>, and Fender made a 12-string Stratocaster twice, once in the 90s and once in 2004. I know how it’s built; owners report that it plays like I’d expect. I found one in Lake Placid Blue, “crafted in Japan,” at a Guitar Center in Delaware for less than the XJ-12 that got away, so I wrote and asked for some details. They checked it in the morning and wrote back; I was satisfied and went to buy it in the afternoon…and it was no longer available. I called the store to find someone had called in and put it on layaway in the few hours between my emails (I sorta suspect that when I showed interest, another potential buyer was contacted with a “now or never, dude”). If they changed their mind and got a refund, I’d still have the opportunity to get it, but that was a slim chance.<\/p>\n

This stung more than I expected, so I went looking again…and found its twin in a small store in New Hampshire<\/a>…for even less than the one in GC. It had one noticeable ding on the back but given the price, rarity, and my FOMO rollercoaster, I decided I could live with it pretty quickly. (Keep in mind that building my own would still cost way, way more, and I’m not buying this to put it in a bank vault.) The price of this model has steadily crept up over the last five years; I definitely got the best deal possible.<\/p>\n

I was very concerned about the length of the headstock, and the internet was absolutely no help here — there’s nothing I could find that would tell me how much longer the guitar would be compared to a standard Strat? So let me rectify that! It turns out, it’s amazingly compact despite all those tuners: My American Standard’s headstock, from the nut to the upper edge, is about 7.25 inches. The XII’s headstock is roughly a quarter-inch longer than that, coming in at just under 7.5 inches. That means it fits in standard Stratocaster cases, which was a huge surprise to me — I did two weeks of research into baritone guitar cases because I assumed this thing would be enormous like the Electric XII<\/a> from the late 1960s. When I found out the truth, I scored a great deal on an SKB-66<\/a> case so all those Kluson-style slot tuners will be nice and safe.<\/p>\n

The finish is on the lighter side of Lake Placid Blue; it’s about the same shade as the blue XJ-6<\/a>. The parchment-colored plastic was almost immediately swapped out for pearloid and brighter white, but I kept the 5.2k pickups and just snapped new covers on them. I cannot argue with the stock single-coils — it sounds like a choir of happy angels with a little compression (I usually throw some very subtle chorus in too). Interestingly, everything is loaded into a ’62 reissue pickguard, so that made finding a replacement slightly more specific. The neck is just 1.65″ (42mm) at the nut, which makes it very comfortable to play. It is slightly trickier to play than a normal six-string simply because of the courses, but really feels like a normal Strat in most respects. Still, it’s forcing me to be more aware of the angles and pressure of my fingers when playing chords, which is actually a good thing for a sloppy player like myself! Also, the guitar came with 010s and the neck was bowing, so I put on Ernie Ball 12-String Slinkys, where the high Es are both 008, and it fell into its natural playing tension. I think it was probably set up with that lighter gauge from the start, but 010s for electric 12-strings are more common, so that’s what it got. (And nobody else wanted to adjust that truss rod, either.)<\/p>\n