Fender Eric Johnson Thinline Stratocaster

Fender introduce the Eric Johnson Thinline Stratocaster signature model – the first-ever semi-hollowbody Strat that still maintains the guitar’s classic contours. Made in close collaboration with Johnson, the aim was to make a lightweight, resonant guitar that cross-breeds the tones of his favourite guitars like the hollow body 1964 Gibson ES-335, and his solidbody signature Stratocaster…

“Fender have done Thinline Stratocasters in the past but they were always flat top. Eric Johnson challenged Fender to make a Thinline Strat that had proper Strat contours. Eric experimented with a lot of different woods but it ended up being an Alder top over an Alder body so it’s all-Alder. Once he had decided that, it’s basically an Eric Johnson signature Stratocaster with a thinline body. It has his custom pickups, the vintage tuners that are staggered with no string trees, no screw-holes to mount the backplate. Every little fine detail that the Eric Johnson Strat is so this guitar is but with the added benefit of the beautiful aesthetic. The acoustic f-hole actually warms up the tone a little bit” – Alan Abassi, Fender Senior Product Manager

“It’s basically the same [as the EJ signature solidbody Strat] except we made the hollowbody but it’s solid through the middle and hollow on the outsides with certain woods and a certain place we put the f-hole and a certain width of the solidbody. This is really going for a certain addition of sound that we already had on the solidbody but we just wanted to retrieve a little bit of that breathing quality. I started thinking about it a few years ago – it would be cool to cross-breed a semi-hollowbody guitar with a Strat because a Strat is a home-base kind of instrument to me but I thought it would be neat to try some aspects of other guitars in this – that was kind of the idea” – Eric Johnson