I’ve seen these locally for a couple of years now (never saw them in the US, strangely, only since moving to Canada), usually selling for around $120. Found this one for much cheaper, so I decided to go for it. I figured if worse comes to worst, I’ve got a guitar to practice my repair skills on and could mod the hell out of it. When I got it the neck was bowed so the action was really high, and it had clearly never been set up. Most of the strings were wound around the outside of the tuner peg, and the high E string looks like it had broken and was tied around a paper clip, which was the wound around the peg. 

So I leveled the neck, then removed the strings, and took the neck off. I did a fret level, crowning, and polish, adjusted the nut slots (some of the strings sounded like a sitar), sanded off the “Academy” label, and sanded the back of the neck a bit. Nice and smooth now. Then I took the pickguard off, wiped the body and pickguard down, and cleaned it up. I noticed the body is routed for three humbuckers. Restrung it and gave it a good setup, and now the thing plays amazingly well. The action is really low, and I’ll probably replace the nut at some point, because I think it’s just a tad too low on the lower strings. 

All in all, a really good buy for $75. It’s really light! Not sure what kind of wood the body is, but there’s a ding in it, and it looks like real wood rather than plywood. I might take the finish off and see, but I like the black, so I’ll likely just leave it. I think at some point I’m going to replace the bridge with a different tremolo, because this one didn’t come with an arm. And I’ll replace the pickups, pickup covers, and pickguard. I’ll probably also add a neck humbucker because I never see Strats with neck-buckers and a bridge single-coil, so it’ll all be for science. But I really excited to have a cheap Strat that actually sounds good and plays well. 

NGD: Picked up an Academy Strat copy for $75 on Marketplace