OK, so it's becoming increasingly unlikely that any of this guitar is in fact "real", but I did notice that the pickups on mine look identical to the early strat pickups both from above and below.

Am I in dreamland thinking that they might be "real"?

I wouldn't bank on it.

I would never say you did mate. It was a reference to the question asked by Musomackem in his initial post. I learnt not to judge a book by its cover quite quickly here.

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I figure the skunk stripe was related to the fingerboard - i.e. rosewood fingerboard doesn't need a skunk stripe because they can put the truss rod in fingerboard-side, whereas my maple neck doesn't have a separate "fingerboard" - the frets are in the neck itself, so it would need the skunk stripe access to put the truss rod in..

Fender stopped skunk-striping their necks in 1959, when rosewood became Fender's wood of choice for fretboards (yet maple was still available, with a skunk stripe at the back on the neck). With a rosewood fretboard, the truss rod just slipped under the fretboard, meaning that there was no reason to skunk stripe necks.

In 1963, to save costs, Fender introduced round laminated fingerboards; maple and rosewood (maple was introduced as an option in 1965, I think). This meant that now, even maple necks would not need to be skunk striped as the fretboard and neck would be two separate pieces. This continued to be a feature until the early 70's, when skunk stripes made a comeback (to be honest not exactly sure when or why [maybe
that's when one piece maple necks made their reappearance?]).

Jimi's strats were most likely from the 60's and early 70's in that film so it was quite likely that these were the kinds of strats he was playing.


I hope that cleared things up a bit. : )

Jimi's would have to have been 60's, or 1970, not 70's. Just a minor clarification.

All this said, how does your guitar play? it seems even if not genuine, to be a pretty well made guitar.

Not to be rude here, but that statement really made me laugh! You make it sound as though a strat style guitar other than a genuine Fender is going to sound different somehow! LOL!!! Give or take the quality of the wood, the pups, etc., most 3 single coil guitars made of alder with a maple neck typically "sound like a Strat"...regardless of who made the instrument.



I could be wrong here (and someone correct me if I am), but I think the "really old" Strats came with Klusons, not Grovers.



Doesn't mean that it still couldn't be a fake logo...someone could have applied it then re-shot the neck with lacquer at some point in this instrument's history. Again, faking a relic is very easy to do and honestly people have been doing it for many years.

I'm not trying to be rude here, but dude...it sounds like you're still trying to prove this is something other than what folks seem to think it is. If you really want to "believe" this is some sort of highly valuable vintage find and somehow that makes you feel better about owning it, that's cool and all but realize that without any kind of substantial proof or documentation, it's still not going to be worth much...at least not as a collectors instrument.

Personally if I were -that- convinced that it was a genuine vintage instrument, I'd take it to an actual collector or someone who's an expert at vintage instruments and have them look at the actual guitar. Who knows...maybe it could be something "special" but I'd also be prepared for said person to tell you it's not worth much either. Again, if you like the guitar, I'd just be happy and play the crap out of it.

Peace,
Jim

you're right of course... when I first bought this guitar I'd been playing super-strat-style guitars with humbuckers for years, and when I first played this guitar I thought "Ah, perfect, it sounds just like that strat sound I've been after" and have had the guitar mentally taggeed as "sounding like a strat" ever since... so much so that now I reel the line off without even thinking about it.



Ah, it's not like that. I don't want to sell it or anything, I just want to get a clearer picture in my mind of the guitar's history, whether it be actually related to Fender or not. I'd just like to get to know my guitar a little better, you know?

When I started this thread I was already pretty certain that the body and scratchplate were "replacements" but was hoping to find out the authenticity of the neck and pickups... the pickups look like strat pickups of that era from the back, so it is still possible that it was put together as a mishmash of real strat and "other" parts.

At the moment it's looking most probable that it's a complete fake, but while there were still some marginal possibilities out there I felt that this last few questions needed to be asked.

If it's 100% fake in that someone has deliberately constructed from scratch materials a guitar that they intended to sell on as a genuine strat, it's different to someone building themselves a home-project guitar to love using a strat neck and various parts from wherever he could scrape them together from, is different again from some guitar builder / repairer slapping together a guitar out of random used bits he had lying around, is different again from some custom luthier building a specific instrument for someone out of carefully chosen parts... see what I mean?

It is looking increasingly like the first choice... the 100% fake... but now someone has suggested that they still made maple necks with skunk stripes in the early 60's too, in which case that answers the question of "hang on, Fender didn't make maple necks in the same year that they had this exact headstock text".

So in fact, although it is probably a fake neck, it is still possible that it isn't, and whether it is or it isn't, I'd rather know than not know.

Know what I mean?

I'm in no way trying to contradict what you're saying, but in my humble opinion, if it was a real vintage Fender neck, it would probably have a sticker,stamp or date at the butt of the neck and would probably still have the original Kluson tuners.

This is the key point about the neck. While it is indeed possible that Fender, upon special order, could have made a one-piece maple neck in 1961 (such a thing would be very rare), that neck is not constructed in the Fender way.

Compare it to this image:
http://www.pinrepair.com/vgi/fender/57_ ... lond_7.jpg
the skunk stripe should end in between the screws, there should be no little pale wood insert. That is not a vintage Fender neck.

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

What Orville says sounds fairly conclusive regarding the neck, I'm afraid.

But here's an interesting side issue:


I've seen two or three fake logos that have been refinned over the top. One thing I've noticed about them is that the waterslide material seems to be substantially thicker than what Fender uses. Which means there is a significant edge to the decal even through layers of lacquer. There's often a bit of a bump there with Fender headstocks too, but it appears to be much less than with the fakes - so far as I've seen, anyhow.

I'm wondering if that is always the case with fake decals? And therefore a way of spotting them? A useful circumstantial piece of evidence, anyways...

Cheers - C

whilst browsing ebay earlier I saw a few decals from some bloke up in leeds. The quality of them was pretty much spot on, there were even customshop decals which makes me worry about a planned purchase. I thought i had bookmarked em but i cant find em now. When i do i'll post a link.
Anyway i continued the trawl through the auctions and started to notice a number of horrible copies with fender decals. Some looked great some were horribly applied. Upon closer inspection (the zoom button was burning) the decals appeared to be identical but application standards made a huge difference to appearance.

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No no and no

I know this sounds simplistic but just buy your higher priced guitars new from Fender!! No worries or second guessing. Don't fret over cheaper ones if you like them and you are happy, do as the Sopranos say "Don't worry bout it!"

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