In 2024 I turned 60. My wife’s idea was to collect money from friends and family to participate in the purchase of the best gift imaginable: the year before I had met a builder from Viterbo, AL Custom Guitars, to whom I had taken my Stratocaster for a setup. As a courtesy guitar, he had lent me one of his own, a splendid 3-tone sunburst Stratocaster with a rosewood fingerboard built in 2023. It was more or less the model I would ideally have wanted as it was quite similar to Fender specs for the 1960s (I was born in 1964 and always thought it would be nice to have a Stratocaster from that period). I was impressed. My wife noticed that I couldn’t stop playing it, as soon as I had time I went back for it. I simply loved the contact with the instrument, it made me want to play it.

The expense for a professional guitar was not in my plans. I wasn’t thinking of buying it but the huge difference in quality with the guitars I was used to (perhaps excluding the PRS) made me think twice. Then, having passed the fateful threshold, my wife insisted that I should seize the opportunity and think about that guitar that had impressed me so deeply. She thus informed family and friends that for my 60th birthday the best present would be a voluntary contribution to the collection for a new, special guitar for the ageing guitarist.

I confess that I had almost decided to buy a similar but Fender-branded Stratocaster, both because of the higher resale value, but mostly because of the lower cost: I didn’t want to weigh too much on the family budget (a Made in Mexico with that look would cost half as much). But on a holiday in London I tried both a Made in Japan and a £3000+ Custom Shop and neither gave me that feeling. On my return I asked to try the AL Custom Guitars Strat again and fell in love with it. I was convinced and decided to buy it. It was going to be the guitar of my 60 years, the guitar of a lifetime.

I have discovered what it means when people say that you have a special relationship with an instrument. There is also the quality issue, which you can touch (and inevitably pay for). When an instrument touches you, you know there is no alternative, it is the one for you, there are no alternatives. If you buy it as an investment it’s all different, you imagine that the value will go up and you think that one day you will give it away. But if you don’t think you can part with it, if you know it’s going to make you play better just because it calls to you, it attracts you, it pushes you to play, then it’s a different story. It had never happened to me before, I had never understood what musicians meant when they talked about real connection with their instrument….

In addition to a few friends, my wife, our son and my sister contributed to the purchase. But I am particularly pleased that my parents, who many years before had given me the greatest gift of my life, my first Stratocaster, also contributed. I had grown up with the unattainable myth of the Stratocaster. I was 16 years old when I was gifted a cheap imitation (the most beloved guitar). I gave it away when I got the PRS EG4 and I still regret it. Some time later I sold the PRS and realised my dream of buying a real Fender Stratocaster. I took my parents with me in memory of that wonderful gift from my youth. In my enthusiasm I paid no attention to the inferior build quality compared to the PRS. It was enough for me to know that I was playing a Stratocaster….

On to the technical side.

The body is made from two 45 mm alder boards glued together. They come from Madeiras Barber, in Spain. As well as the maple neck, AL Custom Guitars buys the boards, then carves and finishes them entirely by hand, without the use of CNC with computers! The fingerboard’s rosewood is Indian and the radius of curvature is a comfortable 12 inches. Needless to say, the capo is made of real bone. The tuners are aged vintage Gotoh, as is the bridge.

The pickups are also handmade by another Italian craftsman, Romano Burini. They are the famous DG Set, hand-wound using the ‘scatterwound’ technique, with overlapping windings. The sound they are aiming for is that of David Gilmour, but they simply sound like a Stratocaster of impressive quality, with a much richer and more open sound. The whole guitar oozes quality and is captivating thanks to its lived-in look given by a neat but not overdone relic applied by AL Custom Guitars.

I’ve never tried a 50s or 60s Stratocaster. I imagine the feeling might be similar to what I have with this AL Custom Guitars: the contact with the woods, the vibrations that it sends to your body. Maybe the original Stratocasters were like that. Nowadays you can’t produce them entirely by hand on an industrial scale. A handcrafted guitar is closer to the first Fender guitars that came out of the hands of those who carved the wood, tended to from the heart, carefully inspected as they used to and as a modern industry simply cannot do. Perhaps an insanely expensive Custom Shop by John Cruz, which I was able to try out at AL Custom Guitars, can be ‘like those of bygone days’. Maybe it is comparable to an artisan Strato. But that is to be seen. An AL Custom Guitars is there at that kind of standard. It’s up for it. And there’s no reason why it won’t be the winner….