Isaiah Sharkey: From a Toy Guitar to the All-New Ultra II Stratocaster

Singer-songwriter. Session ace. Stratocaster showman. One of the most talented guitarists of his generation, Isaiah Sharkey grew up in a musical family, watching his father and uncles playing onstage and emulating their moves. When it came time to choose an instrument of his own, it had to be the electric guitar. “I always knew I wanted to play guitar,” he told Chicago Magazine. “My first memory as a child was this toy guitar with a little red button… [and] there’s this video of my dad’s band back in the ‘80s, and I would watch that video and grab a broom like it was a guitar. My uncles would let me hold a guitar, too. I loved the smell of the guitar. So there was never any wavering.”

That guitar was, of course, at Stratocaster. “The Strat is my ‘now,’ but it’s also nostalgic for me, because it was one of my first experiences with a guitar,” he says. Sharkey got his start playing at Chicago’s storied Velvet Lounge in his early teens, sitting in on sessions with jazz greats like Corey Wilkes, Bobby Irving and the club’s owner, Fred Anderson. A chance meeting with neo-soul pioneer D’Angelo at a music shop in Richmond, Virginia resulted in a years-long collaboration, including a 2016 Grammy win for his work on D’Angelo’s Black Messiah – all before Sharkey turned 30. Seven years later, he joined John Mayer on his world tour. He’s done session work with everyone from Miles Davis to Paul Simon, Patti LaBelle, Chris Martin and Keith Urban – plus released three solo albums. Through it all, the Stratocaster has been his go-to.

Known for his virtuosic playing and genre-bending style, incorporating elements of gospel, jazz, R&B, blues, rock and funk, it’s only fitting that Sharkey represent the all-new American Ultra II Stratocaster – our most advanced model yet. “The Strat has always been a very comfortable guitar to begin with, but with Ultra II, the enhancements make it that much more comfortable,” he notes. “When I’m diving into my solos and I really get into it, sometimes I have to go and play those high notes. And a lot of classic guitars don’t have that contour or that nice sculpted heel – with this guitar you have it. So you can really access stuff.”

He also calls out the Ultra rolled edges – which are more rolled than on any other guitar we’ve created. “The rolled edges allow your hand to wrap around the guitar neck. So if you’re into some Jimi Hendrix-type vibe and like to use your thumb to grab some of the lower notes – it’s really comfortable.”

And let’s not forget about the Ultra II Noiseless Vintage pickups. “That’s a really good benefit,” he notes. “I find in studio sessions, sometimes when you have standard single coils you get that 60 cycle hum, and sometimes that can be a pain if you’re recording or playing live. With the Noiseless pickups you get rid of that.” The pickups feature an evolved architecture of specialized stacked coils with the top coil wound around Alnico V rod magnets to produce true single-coil Fender tone, while the isolated bottom coil is calibrated to preserve the tone and reject hum.

“When I picked up the American Ultra II Strat, I saw how Fender took it to a whole other level again,” says Sharkey. “The amount of versatility – they’ve taken what’s already been the holy grail of guitars and enhanced it, expanded on it that much more.”

Watch Isaiah Sharkey show off the Ultra II Stratocaster and check out the complete lineup here.