When the world turned upside down

Back in the 1990's thing got a bit strange in the guitar world. Squier produced guitars that looked like Gibson LPs and ES-335s, and Epiphone produced guitars that looked like Strats and Teles. Seriously. What were they thinking? Recently, an Epi strat style guitar arrived in a local shop. With a Strat style body, and a "hockey stick" headstock, this guitar attracted me as something that was just not quite right. The color scheme also really got to me. Unlike the example on the pic below, the guitar I tried had a red body, and a black pickguard with cream pickup covers and knobs. It looked pretty darned cool.

As you can see, this is an odd fish. I sat down, plugged it into a Fender twin, and went at it.

The guitar was not bad. It actually played about one notch above a Squier Affinity Strat. The pickups had the distinctive ceramic magnet/ice-pick sounding "scoop" to them, and the action was pretty low. The neck had an ever so slight curve that could easily be tweaked with a 1/4 turn to the truss rod, or it could be left as is. To top it off, this neato oddity was ¢heap: $112.00

Unfortunately, I am in the "no buy" doghouse right now, so I had to pass on it. But if I could buy it, I would swap out the electronics, give it a good setup, and have a real head turner for under $200.