Re: My blind hate of strats
Well, the Strat and it's myriad of variants are flexible due to their modular nature, but I think it might be painting with too broad a brush to just say "if you don't like them, you haven't played enough of them."
Erm, when I said it I didn't actually meant play EVERY variant. It was just a figure of speech... If you have only played a few Squiers and Fender MIMs then you haven't played enough. If however you have played (in no specific order) MIAs, MIJs, Ibanezs, ESPs/LTDs, Charvels, Jacksons, Kramers, Schecters, Carvins, Washburns Strat/SuperStrat variants (or most of these, I for instance have never even touched a MIJ or an ESP/LTD ever) and still couldn't find at least one that worked for you enough to have to have it then yes, you have tried enough and yes, you are one of those few that Strats are not for them...
If you built a Warmoth with a mahogany body, TOM bridge, short-scale pau ferro neck, and put humbuckers in it, can you still call it a Strat? The line gets pretty blurry pretty fast.
Hmm, that's a tough one since by definition this isn't supposed to be a SuperStrat but rather a LP/Strat hybrid.
A Mahogany SuperStrat is for sure a SuperStrat (I am about to buy one and I consider it as such), even a short-scale, Pau Ferro necked Strat (my choice of a Custom Strat would have Pau Ferro for a fretboard although still 25.5 Maple neck...) while humbuckers don't even begin to make a difference. (the Vigier Indus had two PAFish humbuckers and did the LP thing like its' second nature and I would still call it a Strat)...
However, put all these things together and you have stepped so much into LP territory that we can no longer talk about a single design guitar but rather a middle of the road hybrid (dunno how it'd SOUND though...)
In short, what I meant was that any alteration to the classic LP recipe you make is a step further away from an LP while, unless you specifically try to make a hybrid out of a Strat, there are a LOT of things you can do differently from the original design and still be a Strat.