Just piced up a MIM (I think) Strat whose previous owner removed the serial number. I can find no pics of this guitar on Google, but maybe someone out there may be able to help me figure this out:\

Maple neck and maple fingerboard (tinted)
Black body with tortoise pickguard
Vintage tuners (no name on them)
Vintage saddles that say "FENDER FENDER"
Tinted
Smaller non-70s headstock
Spaghetti logo, silver with thin black outline that says "7ender Stratocaster"
Pickguard - 4 ply? Tortoise/white/black/white
3 single coil pickups

May be from the 90's but no one is certain.

Any thoughts? Thanks to all in advance.

John in San Diego

Well, if you pull off the neck, you should have a date stamp there.

Drat! I just changed the strings. Can I loosen the strings and get the neck off just enough to take a peek in the neck pocket for a date?

you could i guess, but you need take the neck right off. i suppose you could technically pull it without unstringing, but that sounds like a disaster in the making to me.

Try posting some pictures of it here

loosen the strings and put a capo on the 1st or 2nd fret. Then you can take the neck off without your strings coming off the tuners.

It sounds fake to me. The serial no' on 90's mexican strats is directly below the fender logo on the headstock. Still theres a posibility so check the neck heel for a QC sticker.

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No no and no

I managed to get the neck off. No dates or numbers on either the heal of the neck or in the neck pocket. But there was a small slip of paper with lines on it. Anyone familiar with this?

if you look under the pickguard ( if it is genuine) there will be a production date on the underside of the pickguard also , it sounds like a M I M vintage jimmy vaughn style mexi-strat , 8 holes in pickguard is a vaughn , it may also just be a ""hot"" strat thats the other reason why the original owner wiped the serial #'s clean ,,, hope it helps you find the date

The pickguard has 11 holes (indicates it is MIM?), and the underside has a foil square applied to it. No other markings on the underside of the pickguard, nor in the body routing that I saw.

Unfortunately it is really sounding like a fake.

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I didn't Lose my mind, I traded it for this guitar.

Gotta agree with Chet. Getting the serial no' off without damaging the logo would of been too hard. There should of been a date stamp into the wood of the neck pocket that would of needed sanding out. A bit excessive to remove something no one is going to see.

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No no and no

This guitar is so nice and playable, I thought I would recheck the neck pocket again and this time more thoroughly. Yes, there is a number burned into the pocket. It is partially obscured by black paint on the lower half of the numbers. It looks like 16522, but hard to tell. I am looking for a more powerful light and magnifying device. Also, on the underside of the neck heal there is a 1 1/2 x 1 3/4 piece of white paper with 6 black lines and numbered 1 thru 7 on the left margin. There is a handwritten symbol or letter, could be a D or an I, but not sure.

www.provide.net/~cfh/fender2.html#strat has some interesting info comparing orginals to reissues. According to their examples, the vintage tuners, string tree, decal, saddles all look like reissues.

As for the serial number, there are abrasions on both the front and the back of the rounded end of the head stock.

I'm gonna see if I can get more clarity on that neck pocket number. Thanks all!

I don't think that the MIM Standards were ever produced with vintage tuners.

Do they look like this :

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Yes. They look like Kluson between 1952 -1956, or the one from 1964 - 1967.

How do I add a picture?

photobucket.com