'As befits a man who swims deep in the groovy waters of funk, Cory is rarely seen on stage without a Stratocaster – and one Strat in particular. Cory’s Sapphire Blue Highway One model might not be the most high-end guitar for a globe-trotting guitarist to trust every night, but this one has been his faithful companion for a long time.

“I’ve had this guitar since high school – my first real guitar was a Strat,” he explains. “I wanted to play guitar so bad. I went to a pawn shop as a sixth grader and bought a Gretsch Traveling Wilburys guitar – they’re still out there somewhere! It was this $75 used guitar and it didn’t stay in tune. It’s probably actually a nice guitar, but the one that I had… well there’s a reason why I was sitting in a pawn shop!”

But Cory persisted with his ungainly Gretsch, all the while badgering his dad to buy him a real guitar, desperate to convince him that this wasn’t a passing infatuation.

“By that time, I’m in seventh grade. I’ve got a punk rock band. I’m playing with my friends, and I said, ‘I have this much money saved up. And I’m wondering if we combined Christmas and my birthday and everything else…’ And I live in Minnesota, so I was like,‘If I shoveled the driveway 100 times this winter… could you buy me a guitar?’

“And my dad says, ‘Alright, but here’s the deal – you need to get a Stratocaster.’ ‘Okay, why?’ ‘Well, look at Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Nile Rodgers…’ he’s listing off all these legends. ‘I rest my case!’ And I’m like,‘Okay, cool.’

“So I got a Strat, and here we are, it just feels like home. When I play a Strat, it just feels like my voice. I love other guitars, but the Strat is just home.”' - https://guitar.com/features/interviews/cory-wong-motivational-music-for-the-syncopated-soul/

I’m good friends with Jasen’s tech and he sent me this picture. It’s a Highway one Strat that has been modified with a single humbucker in the bridge.

John Scofield’s rhythm guitar player, Avi Bortnick show us his custom-made Stratocaster in this Premier Guitar video. “The body is one of those Highway One jobs which I got off eBay just because it was fairly lightweight and it had "LT" carved in the back, which, somehow, I liked,” he says at (11:23). It has EMG pickups, he says. “I think these are the SA 88s, I believe. I've had them for so long, you can see it's kind of worn down. It's a guitar I play with John. I hardly ever use this guitar for other things unless I'm doing a funk recording session. Because I think these pickups are really great for kind of Prince, almost '80s style funk. They're very clear. They're very even. Not super great for soloing somehow. I don't think they have a whole lot of character. But they work well for this band. I've actually tried a few other guitars and I always come back to this one. And it feels good and I'm used to it,” (11:48). For tuning machines and strings, Bortnick uses, “American Standard…locking tuners. These strings are a 10 set just a D'Addario 10 set. Really good. Been using D'Addario forever and they work well,” (12:28)

Chen Balbus is seen with his Fender Highway One Stratocaster, which he customized by removing its original creamy paint. He primarily uses this guitar in the studio, as highlighted in an Instagram post where he describes it as inspiring.

Instagram post where Jonny uses the hashtag #highwayonestrat, whilst shredding out on it in this instagram post from his personal account.