Dude! This is your basic heavy metal machine from the 80's. For those of you that can't remember that far back, this instrument
allowed you to sweep, dive bomb, and alternate pick to your heart's content -- oh yeah... comb and spray your beautiful hair! Its
wide, flat neck, big frets, and a killer double locking Kahler tremolo allows you to pummel all headbangers! I bought this guitar from
KK Music in Manchester, TN in 1988, and still play it regularly. Nowadays these are selling at very low prices. A shame because
it really sounds and plays great. It has a Dimarzio humbucker, Gotoh tuners, and other quality hardware. This is still one of my favorite guitars.
Try to find one of these and take it for a test drive -- try Round and Round by Ratt.

Commentary and 1987 Fender HM Strat from John at GuitarAttack.com. Click to see more pictures.

Here is a very nice Bluestone 1987 HM from Pierre Derap, of Canada.
In his own words:

Hi, my name is Pierre and I am from St-Georges, Quebec, Canada. I bought an HM Strat in 1989, brand new, from a dealer in Quebec City. I went
there to buy an Ibanez, but at that time there was only a few in the store and one had a twisted neck and others were too expensive for the money
I had to put on a guitar.

So I looked around and found this guitar, a Bluestone ( that was the manufacturer's name for that color) Fender HM Strat with a maple neck and
decided to give it a try. My guitar teacher was with me at the store and he already had one, an early version, and he wasn't very satisfied with it.
He did not like the sound and had some problem with the knobs. It was the pink model. So I was not sure about buying it but tried it anyway.
It was a good move. I instantly felt good with the guitar. Neck was a little larger than an Ibanez and very easy to play. Sound was ok for that time
because I had just started to play. Finish was beautiful. My teacher tried it and he was impressed by the evolution of the guitar. He said that the
feel was more like an Ibanez than his. That confirmed my decision to buy it. After like 20 years of playing, I still like that guitar. I have made some
changes to it and plan to do some others but I am very satisfied with it. I had put some bigger gauge strings (.011-.049) on it and had to put a
trem setter because I wanted to keep a floating bridge. I will probably return to .010-.046 and sit the bridge on the guitar to get more resonance
from the the wood and get more sustain and for it to be easier to play for my 11 year old kid. I also plan to get a DiMarzio X2N Humbucker to replace
the other DiMarzio (I always thought was a PAF Pro, but you put a doubt in my mind) to get a more contemporary sound. Anyway, that was the only
thing I'd never been completely happy with on the guitar so... for now , here is what I know from that guitar:

Alder Body * Maple Neck * Gotoh tuning keys * Fender American Standard single coil pick-ups neck and middle

Dimarzio Super 3 humbucker bridge * Kahler Spyder trem * Made in U.S.A.

Above is our friend Nick Welling's prized 1988 HM Strat that he restored all himself.

And here are some pics of Nick's Fender / Heartfield HM Strat.

Here's a beautiful example of one of the later HM Strats with the Red Marble finish and a Maple fretboard. It was
one of the '90 - '92 versions, with the 70's Fender logo followed by the "digital" Strat logo.

Here is another beautiful HM Strat, heavily customized by it's owner.

I found out there were 300 US made prototypes from 1987 issues before the HM line actually ran from 1989-1992. It got canned in 1992
in part due to Kahler going out of business. They had inferior parts made from a cast where the metal was melted and poured into the cast.
This results in metal of less density and of weaker temper than the parts Floyd Rose made - which were milled. What this means to us is
inferior tone and quicker stripping of the hex key slots. Kahler also used imperial rather than metric measures (or was that vice-versa)
meaning you could only get replacement parts from Kahler - and with casted steel that was often needed. Unlike every other licensed
floyd rose maker, you couldn't buy parts from any other vendor and have them fit a Kahler. Fender bought Floyd Rose itself outright shortly
after so to avoid this kind of disaster from ever affecting them ever again - but not in time to try to save the HM line. The Kahler situation left
a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. Anyway - I also ran into need for parts and said fuck it - time to mod - what is the ultimate HM Strat?

* It needs thick strings for tone - so I used 12 to 52s and adjusted the truss rod accordingly.
* It needs sustain - I took out the middle single coil I never use so that there was less magnetic pull on the strings - also
thick strings helps here as well.
* It needs a real bridge - rather than a fixed bridge, the ultimate in vibration transference from strings to body - I kept the
function of the Floyd Rose by installing a real Floyd Rose - a Floyd Rose II Pro with a gold finish (in hopes that it would rub and look worn).
* It needs maximum signal strength and tone in the bridge pickup - out with the DiMarzio (which are great) and in with the
Gibson 57 Classic Plus - also Gold finish.
* I also gave it all silver wiring, Jim Dunlop Strap Locks, and took off 14 layers of laquer finish on the body.

Now the body is blond (wood / gold hardware) and the neck and headstock are black (black chrome hardware, original black finish on the
headstock, and rosewood fretboard). It is a black on blond look. I also needed to enhance the spiritual voodoo of this axe - I pencilled in
an Ouija board, then used a wood burning kit to burn the design into the wood. I haven't finished this rig - I still intend to get a custom finished
pair of Lipstick Tube pickups with a gold finish to replace the original single coils. I keep swapping between gold and black hardware for the
volume and tone pots. On the 5 pickup selector - 3rd position is mute.

I hope you enjoy the pics. Ohh, I was 17 when I bought this and back then I had named it 'Angel'.

Brian Dowding

Above is "Jack Hammer's" Pink '88 HM Strat. Below are his two good-lookin' Squier
HM3 Strats. (These Squiers were made in the same factory as Ibanez guitars - and
could probably be considered to be rebranded Sabres).

This is one of the sort of rare Black Marble finishes.
I believe it's a 1989, and it's a lot heavier than my 1988.

Restoration Project - 1988 Fender HM Power Strat MIJ


BEFORE - Bought at Guitar Center for $350. It had been there for months, overlooked - like something from the Island of Forgotten Toys. It played and sounded great, but had a few battle scars!	AFTER - After seeing Joe Satriani in '06 with his signature guitar with his head on it, I thought it would be cool to do a guitar with my parrot's head on it.


Made in Japan, baby! Right after the employees bought Fender back from CBS - but before they had their own tools.	Atomic Guitarworks stripped and repaired the body, painted it white. Then a friend of mine in the prinshop at work printed Elliott's picture on water slide decal paper I bought on the internet. (Thanks, Becky!) Then AGW applied the final gloss coats over the decal, making it permanent. Removed the tone control and the coil-tap, and replaced the volume pot with a new one. I also got a black metal dome knob for the volume control.


Original Kahler 2720 Spyder bridge. Missing a fine tuner and trem arm.	Tim scrubbed it clean with gun cleaner and 3-in-1 oil.


Of course the headstock was dinged up. All of these are!	They also restored the headstock for me. (Thanks, Tim!)


DiMarzio created a custom pickup just for this guitar. It's called the DiMarzio Super 3, and it's based on the DiMarzio Distortion, with boosted mids and clipped highs. I love the sound - it pushes the distortion on your amp in the right place to make it crunchy and fuzzy but still articulate. In '94, DiMarzio made these available to the public and they still sell them today.	There's an extra hole in the neck plate - the micro-tilt adjuster. It allows you to tilt the neck for better, lower string height. Effectively, it is an "auto-shimming" device. I sanded off the lacquer finish on the back of the neck and gave it a tung oil finish. Smooth!

Here's a beautiful Raspberry 1989 HM Strat, at the legendary Manny's Music in New York City.
Owned by Mikosz.

Possibly one of the cleanest original finish HM Strats around. Owned by cleaned up by "dynasonic."

Sonic1994 had this to say about his very clean HM: I was first introduced to hm strats by my dad, He has teal one with a single humbucker -
he bought from guitar center used in 1989. I played it, and fell in love with the neck. I knew I had to have one, this guitar had everything I wanted
(24 frets, Locking tremolo, quality build). I didn't have enough money to get one, so I sold my main guitar at the time, a crafted in India Jackson Kelly.
It was hard to let it go, but It was all worth it once this beautiful guitar arrived at my door.

Here's another very clean HM Strat. White with a maple fretboard, it fools you into thinking it's a traditional guitar when it's really got a tiger under the hood!
Photos coutesy of HeavyMetal Strat member edgehog. Please click for larger images. Edgehog says this guitar has an emotional value because
it's the first really good guitar he bought.

This is Stephen T's 1988 HM Strat. He's customized it with a Kahler 2722 bridge, similar to the Spyder but with more weight for more
sustain. Intead of an allen wrench, it has thumbscrews to lock the strings in place. Also replaced the Duncan '59 with an original
DiMarzio Super 3.

Here are some pictures of Simon Scholten's very nice HM Strat. Another classic white with maple fretboard. Simon has just gotten this guitar refretted and
was kind enough to send these pictures. Check out how clean that Kahler is!

Gallery Page

Alder Body * Maple Neck * Gotoh tuning keys * Fender American Standard single coil pick-ups neck and middle Dimarzio Super 3 humbucker bridge * Kahler Spyder trem * Made in U.S.A.

Alder Body * Maple Neck * Gotoh tuning keys * Fender American Standard single coil pick-ups neck and middle

Dimarzio Super 3 humbucker bridge * Kahler Spyder trem * Made in U.S.A.