I'm just about to lend someone my number 1.

I've had this guitar since November 1989.

It was bought originally because I was playing in a 'Make way for Christmas' musical production and needed a guitar that was softer, smoother, more knopfleresque in delivery than the one I'd used for years before. There was one song in particular that really demanded that out of phase Dire Straits tone that is only available from a strat.

So I went to Rockbottom in Croydon, which at that time was a huge place with hundreds of guitars (how the mighty have fallen) and spent many hours trying all the strats I could afford (and some I couldn't). My eyes wanted a pink paisley 70s reissue (and I still wish I had one) but it was let down by being a true replica and the V shaped neck wasn't great, plus the tone wasn't really there.

I must have played 25 different strats - just worked my way through a wall full - they were stacked in 2 rows, one above the other along one wall, and there were so many that they were all hung edge-on. There were 2 that stood out: an electric blue one with rosewood fingerboard and a red one with maple fingerboard.

I went back and forth between the 2 for ages, trying to decide. I loved the electric blue - quite an unusual colour for a strat, and I have only ever seen 1 like it since - and the red. In the end the red won out - it had THE tone, just played acoustically it was and still is head and shoulders above any strat I've played. The maple neck is a little chunkier than most, but it fits like it was made for my hands, and one it was set up properly and I'd got used to it music just flowed.

This is THE fattest, sweetest, smoothest toned strat you'll ever hear. And this is it's drawback too. Clean arpeggios are beautiful, strummed chords with a dash of chorus, yum. Fat lead lines with compression and delay could make you weep. It'll make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end played the right way. But show it some overdrive and it turns to squidge, plus the neck isn't *that* fast for hard rock playing. And I guess this is why I keep looking at other guitars at the same time - it just doesn't do the drive thing and different pickups don't help either.

So like I said, she's about to go on loan and for the first time we'll be apart. Hope he'll treat her right.