It goes without saying that there is much in a name... especially if the name is The Dream.

It's extremely rare that Fender issue a stratocaster guitar without a serial number - most likely you've never seen one - until now!

'The Dream' is the name given to this guitar by Fender themselves and this fact goes some way to showing just how unique this instrument is.

The custom shop logo reads:

'The Dream' Custom Built Gene Baker Fender USA

The neck on 'The Dream' stratocaster is fabricated with a 'through neck' design, thus allowing very easy playing right up to the 24th fret. Because Fender made this as a 24 fret neck design right from the start the instrument is 'a dream' to play.

As you become more accustomed to the special composite radius of this guitar the top of the neck is a cool place to be, easy to get there with many completely unique sounds, but all the old favourites are there as well as some fabulous clean 'driven' tones that remain unique to this instrument.

Fender utilised a logo 'similar' to the USA Deluxe strat on this neck - it's a type of foil material and in this case it is over lacquered for protection.

The markers on the neck are star shaped as you will see on many of the photo's on this site and utilise the Sims Leds design and are visible on a dark stage, or you can set them to work like a VU meter... see the Sims Leds section of this site for further technical info.

The electronics driving this instrument are particularly technical and it's easy to see where lots of the original cost went - custom development and many features that have not been available on any other Fender ever.

Also notice on the photo that there are locking Spurzel's fitted as standard - probably the best machine heads in the world today.

Examine the photo's on this site of the front of the headstock and you will notice that there are no string tree's present on the top strings. This is not a problem on this guitar because of the way in which the construction has been undertaken. The Floyd Rose tremolo and the Sperzel's achieve a great solution - and linked to the unique radius on the neck the string tree's would have been fitted for no reason - so Fender just left them off!

Another interesting feature is that of the truss rod. The rod is actually threaded in reverse - so all adjustments are carried out on this guitar by turning the truss rod adjuster the opposite way to a normal guitar. The story goes that Paul Reed Smith himself made an adjustment to the truss rod and turned it so far the wrong way that he 'almost' bound the rod - an action that would have caused severe damage to the instrument. Luckily he was corrected in his ways before any damage occurred.

The stratocaster body has been developed around a through neck design, capped with a maple top. The wood used for the back is a beautiful lightweight Louisiana swamp ash which adds considerably to the overall tone of the guitar. The way that Gene Baker made the neck joint with the body really allows you to play in any part of the neck right up to the 24th fret.

Examine the photo above and you can clearly see that the maple top has been custom carved to perfection. The body includes a number of hardware innovations including an end located output jack, severely contoured body top around the switches and tone/volume controls as well as other unique aspects included in the design.

For example, all screws holding pieces or parts on to the body screw in to brass ferrules - i.e. no screws go in to wood - this thing has been made to last forever, with no expense whatsoever spared to the extravagant features embodied within the design. That sort of level of detail is extremely uncommon on guitars and I have to say that I have never seen another guitar with that feature. Awesome John did tell me that on occasion they changed the setup of the guitar behind those blanking plates many times in one night while at shows and so you can imagine what ordinary wood screws would have been like... stripped! But with this modification there is no such chance of that happening.

Because the guitar was made by Fender for an artist you can see the input that Asim (Awesome John) had and contributed to the final product. There are actually many features not ever seen on any other Fender instrument to this day, such as the inclusion of a 'volume knob' for future expansion as the technology becomes available.

The Dream Stratocaster utilises a one of a kind Custom hand wound set of Lace Sensor "Holy Grail” pickups. This unique pickup system was custom made for this amazing guitar and hand built by Mr. Jeff Lace himself.

At first glance the pickups look like a stock Lace Hum bucker in the bridge, single coil in the middle and hum bucker in the neck. But the design is actually 5 separate superbly balanced “special single coil pickups” (featuring zero noise hum cancelling due to its cutting edge technology, yet they sound warm sweet and very musical).

Awesome John did say that when the bridge pickup is in single pickup mode (i.e. like a Strat) then the pickup will sound almost exactly like the best 54's you've ever heard. BUT - when both bridge pickup's are selected then they are configured in such a way that both pickup outputs are 'summed', effectively enhancing that 54 single coil sound - almost like an overlay and definitely not like a hum bucker.

These rich toned pickups are configured into a setup which can easily be split into single units as you play. This totally unique pickup system was “designed” by Jeff Lace and guitar visionary “Awesome John”.

Here's some more info about Lace pickups...

The Lace Holy GrailTM is the ultimate vintage pickup; the tone of a '54 Stratocaster without the noise or the price tag. Conventional stacked pickups sacrifice the high and low end, but the Holy Grail's break-through design retains the depth and sparkle that is the hallmark of vintage tone. Hum-free, with higher output and more sustain, the Holy Grail delivers the classic tone you have been searching for.

These highly sophisticated devices, developed by Don Lace, President and Director of Research and Development of Actodyne General, mark a major break from conventional pickup design.

This radical new approach, utilizing state-of-the-art sensor technology never before used in any industry, offers features not available within the parameters of passive pickup systems - single coil systems with no noise; increased dynamic range; more than double the output range (if desired); no magnetic string damping; accurate string balance; unequaled sustain with no frequency change during falloff; and, the ability to accurately reproduce the sound characteristics of any existing conventional pickup - all passively.

Actodyne General, Inc. is a high technology research and development firm involved with the design and manufacture of precision magnetics and micro-magnetics for valve, speakers and acoustic emitting sensors (AES) for various industries.

Further info from www.agi-lace.com

The electronics on board this guitar are a real enhancement over the original Fender Stratocaster pickups that you see on stock product. In fact one of the primary reasons why Awesome John did not like Stratocaster's was the sound!

The electronics ARE extreme, including the Sims neck leds, the fully customized pickups, the custom control knob for future expansion and of course the way that the instrument is actually wired.

Awesome John did say that he had his guitar tech rewire this guitar (when used at its most frequent use) up to 20 times in just one month, the sound combinations linked with the quite unique electronics and the unique woods and build design make this guitar for anyone without the right experience - an electronic nightmare - in a nice sort of way.

The custom case that was included and came with The Dream Stratocaster.

It is a one off design and completely unique as is the guitar. I would describe this case as a sort of 'Birdseye' finish in a pink coloured covering. Other than the unique finish the case also has a real leather handle. Basically it seems like Ostrich finish and may or may not be the genuine ostrich.

Internally the case has a custom compartment about two thirds the way up the neck - again a unique design for this specific instrument.