Haha. Yeah, I am with ya on the self tuning.

I don't remember what article it was from. It was something about Strats vs Strat copies. I bought a (used) strat style guitar recently and was reading all I could leading up to it.

Ultimately, I went with a G&l legacy. It just seemed better than a fender for the same price-point. It had a better build quality, a better vibrato system, a better (and more innovative) tone control system, and it had a flatter fretboard (which I am a fan of). Despite all of this I still struggled a bit with my choice, just because Fender is so ingrained in my brain.