Absolutely shop around and take your time, when I got my strat I was going for a mic cable and some other little stuff, but I turn around and there was this strat... (I didn't even notice the other 2 hanging either side of it). I pulled it off the rack, it looked beautiful (hense it's name "Purdy"). It played really nice, I pluged it in... "WOAH! This strat has a big pair of balls." So I asked about it and was informed that it was an American Body, Japanese Neck (with jumbo frets which had just been fixed proporly), all new wiring, noisless single coil pickups, 5 graphie saddles (standard saddle on the low E), a nice hardshell case, and oh yeah, it was $300. Needless to say, it came home with me.

Anyway, the point is look around, buy yourself a guitar that has a soul all it's own (which sadly, alot of instruments today lack).

[This message has been edited by Raskolnikov (edited 07-13-2000).]