Where can I learn the most/fastest about these guitars? Interested in history, quality, why they did the remakes etc. I'm a strat rookie but picked one up from a friend who lost her fiance to cancer. It was his favorite guitar. Thx

Hi Eddie, welcome to the Forum.

Man, there's a lot of history in what you ask: your best route is to get one (or more) of the books about Fender Strats and read up on the period.

Very briefly, late '60s into the '70s Fender changed the build specs of the Strat quite a bit. Partly product development, partly attempts to cut costs during the era when the company was owned by CBS.

Some notable '70s features include the big headstock, three-bolt neck attachment, thick polyester finishes and the pickup specs.

This whole issue gets mixed up with the real or perceived drop in production quality during the '70s. People got to feeling that good quality Strats came from the pre-CBS time, the '50s and early '60s. Thus, people searched out those instruments, and in turn Fender came to realise there was a market in building guitars with the specs of earlier models. 1957 and 1962 are often considered to be particularly archetypal examples of the marque.

So from the '80s (or late '70s, I'm not sure?) on Fender made "Reissue" guitars to traditional specifications, and these have been a core part of the catalog ever since.

There's a whole lot more history concerning upheavals in production in the 1980s, competition from the East, the beginning of Fender Japan, changing ownership of the company...

Buy a book! Very interesting stuff.

Cheers - C