Fender Ritchie Blackmore Stratocaster - Olympic White with Rosewood Fingerboard Reviews

It has been a while since I've owned a Fender Strat and I really wanted one, but being a Rock/Metal guy I wanted a guitar with a good sound and fit for harder rock with a fast neck and beefy sounding pickups. After some looking I was impressed with some of the demo videos of this model I found on YouTube. Being a Deep Purple and Rainbow fan myself I was not turned away by this incredible ax. I recall the last Fender Strat I owned being a Yngwie Malmsteen, but could never get used to the deeply scalloped frets. What I liked about this model is that the fretboard is a graduated fretboard, as in the frets gradually scallop more and more about midway upwards until they deeply scallop by the high frets. This is perfect as it helps facilitate good vibrato for those high bends during solos.

First off the looks are great. This guitar looks fantastic and has great, tight construction. The neck is fast and perfect, thick enough to dig into though still fast enough for high speed shredding. Playing Yngwie and Blackmore licks on this thing is truly a blast. This strat is also great for those David Gilmore styled leads, so it certainly lends itself well for bluesy guitar playing. The pickups (obviously) are great and I love the fact that this guitar only has two pickups (neck/bridge) as I never found much use for the middle pickup anyway. So the pickup settings are Bridge, Bridge/Neck, and Neck. The bridge it great and lends itself well to Blackmore styled whammy bends and stays in tune after some whammy abuse. The tuners are also great and what's not to like about that 70's style headstock with Ritchie's signature?

Overall I love this guitar, I cannot put it down. It is addictive and fun to play and it looks and sounds absolutely great. I've gotten some compliments at shows on how it looks and sounds. I only wish it came with a Fender hard-shell case and not a gig bag, but the bag is great and better than nothing. If you like hard rock, classic rock, and blues this guitar would be a great addition to your arsenal of axes.

I can honestly say this is the 3rd time ive owned this guitar. I will never let it go again. The 3rd time is the charm. Its spectacular. Nice beefy tone., can shred., can rhythm., just an all out great great guitar. Special shout out and thanks to Derek for making this happen and being on point and attentive to my concerns and needs.
This ones a keeper and a winner.

First let me commend the staff at sweetwater. Anthony was very responsive to my questions and set up the guitar the way I wanted it. I have to say the look if the guitar is fantastic, I get compliments on it all the time.
When I first pluged it in I dont think I was overwhelmed, but as I kept playing the guitar I could hear the differences and the crunchiness of the pickups wow love the sound. Scalloped fretboard feels great although you might want to put some guitar honey, the wood feels very dry.

As a lifelong fan of Ritchie Blackmore I had been looking for this guitar for a while. The professionalism at your company, the very detailed photos and helpful E-mails caught my attention. Everything was top service and the guitar plays and sounds great. Reminds me of the master Blackmore eveytime I pick it up. Thanks a lot Aaron at Sweetwater..

The Richie Blackmore strat was on a waiting list. But it was well worth the waiting. With the great help from Wayne, I got my guitar shipped all the way to Aruba. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that right out of the box, the guitar was extremely well playable, Just a little tuning. I was surprised that the guitar stayed fairly in tune after the first songs that I played.

The guitar plays beautifully and the finish is awesome. The guitar is made in Mexico but it's still Fender quality. I highly recommend the guitar.

I must say a big thank you to the people of Sweetwater. All the way from the first contact, the order process as well as the after sales, it's been a pleasant experience, Sweetwater is all about service and they really care for their products and customers. Sweetwater can count on me for future purchases.

I will have to say I did not buy this from Sweetwater, but that was because at the time I bought it, Sweetwater did not carry this guitar. Also, had I bought it from Sweetwater, some if the warranty and playability issues might never have happened. So, I am going to review the guitar itself.

The guitar from the box was badly in need of setup. The issues I had with intonation and playability probably would have been avoided had the guitar gone through Sweetwater's 55 point quality check. On mine the nut was high, and on the low E the intonation screw had to be cut and the spring shortened to give me the length to get the intonation correct,

After I got this set up with my normal tech, the guitar is fantastic. It took no time at all to get used to the partially scalloped neck, and the fretwork and cosmetics of the guitar are really well done., The pickups are single coil Seymour Duncan quarter pounders, so they are noisy if you put gain on them. The middle position does cancel the noise quite nicely, and is the wonderful surprise of this guitar.Wonderfully mellow when played clean, but nice bite when overdriven.

I eventually changed out the pickups to Seymour Duncan which were stack humbuckers voiced to sound like single coil. That made the guitar playable in all pickup positions. But this is personal preference, and I liked the original pickups well enough to install them on my MIM stratocaster.

Once properly set up, this guitar stays in tune wonderfully well. The scolloped fingerboard allows for very broad vibrato and bends. The neck feels very fast, and I like the gloss finish. I've had this guitar for two and a half years, and it has been completely trouble free.

Minor points are that the strings seem a little close to the edge of the fingerboard, so you do have to make some adjustments in playing, but I got used to it very quickly and it became a total non factor,

I am so glad to see that Sweetwater is not carrying this guitar. If you are a fan of Ritchie, you will love this guitar. If you are looking for a different scalloped neck option, this is very nice, as the partial scallop allows for a more normal feel. It's not just a metal guitar, it is a wonderful clean instrument. I like the two pickups in this, and don't even miss the middle one.

guitar was playable out of box but needed my own setup to get it to play like i want it to nut is a bit high on these also but can be fixed easy,sounds great and sweetwater did a great job on shipping will buy again PRS is next

I read horror stories about how bad these MIM strats were so I asked Sweetwater to have it set up properly. They did so and the guitar arrived within 48 hours of ordering. The guitar was set up from Sweetwater well enough so that I wouldn't think of returning it. It still needs to see my guitar tech and its going to need some work but Sweerwater did everything that I could have asked for.

As for the guitar, the neck is why you buy it. Im not a huge Blackmore fan honestly but this neck is just sick with the gradual scallops. I wish it had a hardshell case and middle pick up. I also don't like the straplocks but thats just me. The bar is not great at keeping in tune. As previously stated the set up is not good stock but Sweetwater cleaned it up well enough for me to keep it.

I give Sweetwater a 5.0 for their efforts but the guitar itself is a bit expensive for a MIM strat with no hardshell case, no middle pickup and shoddy setup work. The guitar itself is a 3. You buy this for the neck and bridge pickup.