Was at my local music shop today and saw several brand new strats with 3 piece mismatched bodies, with way increased prices... For such price increases, I expected matched 2 piece strat bodies and some new translucent colors like 2-tone, natural, etc,... both in alder and ash, not the 3 piece 3-tone, butterscotch alder-only mismatches. Anybody feel the same way?

Oh heck yes !!! I can't tell you how many time i have seen MIA strats with horribly mismatched bodies, and this is unacceptable even at the old prices.

But heres what really amazes me beyond words....i see FAR less of this among MIM 50's and 60's bodies ! when i say far less i mean the vast majority of MIA bursts show very mismatched pieces while probably the same percentage of MIM reissue DON'T look mismatched. How in *&%# do they let that happen?!!! It's the main reason i went with a mim instead of a mia RI. Every MIA i looked at was from unacceptable to horrible in this regard. My MIM 50's is gorgeous with amazing grain and you cannot see the lines where the pieces are matched without looking very hard, and it's at times impossible to see. Even the neck is gorgeous with lots of flame and the nicest amber color to the finish i have seen on any RI of any type. Yeah, i'm with you on this one BIG time !

They got away with it in the 70s, so why not now?

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You dig?

Yet MANY players still insist the MIA is the better choice. Once again, here's proof against their postulation.

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You dig?

It's like what dreaming-to-be-princesses say: you gotta kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince.


Keep looking for that nicely figured Strat body.

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

My Mustang matches up well on the top--but on the back you can see where the pieces are joined quite easily--which is okay--because the front is done properly.

On the other hand my EB-3 copy (A Gibson Bass copy), the back has a nicer grain than the top.

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It wasn't Willy-Nilly, it was at crows.

Fender is not book matching production guitar bodies they buy these things as body blanks. They are not buying raw timber and cutting it then glueing up the own blanks. And if you see any guitar with book matched bodies you in luck because some dude at the mill did it by chance. They are just scaned and graded by color match like wood used for funiture .You can also bet the Custom Shop gets the top graded wood and its is purchased at a higher price from the supplier. Also if you look at one of the many post that pop up on here from time to time you will see the pics from the Fender Mexico tour that shows pallets of body blanks with a veveer on the face waiting to be used. And you can bet they are not using veneer on a solid body guitars that is going to be painted with a solid finish why bother.

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The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Thomas Jefferson

Exactly.

And here's that pic of veneered up Mexican Standard body blanks:



And of course the solid colors DO NOT get the veneer treatment.

Notice that Fender's wood vendor puts the front arm contour on the blanks.

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

Yes, i mentioned that pic in another thread. I am fully aware of that, but my point is that the MIM REISSUE bodies are NOT those in that pic. They are NOT veneered 7 piece bodies, they are the same bodies that they use for the MIA RI's and made in the USA. This was told to me by a fender rep and i have read it several times and the ultimate proof is my 50's RI burst. It is as far as i can tell 3 piece with no veneer at all. You can look in the trem and pickup routs and see there is no veneer. In fact, i say 3 piece even tho i can only see one seam. I just assume there is another i cannot see because it's matched so well. And even the one seam i can see has to be carefully looked for to see it and in the right light. I'm also not saying they match them, but that some are well matched by the luck of the draw. In fact, thats real obvious by the many horribly mismatched MIA ones i've seen. But i did say that i have seen many more well matched MIM RI's than MIA for whatever reason. I have no idea why, makes little sense but thats what i've seen. Anyways, those veneered MIM bodies go to the standard models, nit the RI models. Like i said, the RI models are made in the USA and only painted and assembled in mexico.

The higher priced MIM models use better woods, thankfully.
Your observations can be explained a couple of ways, the one you mentioned, luck of the draw, and another: that by the time you see them, the good ones have already been purchased. Think about it, what guitars do you see hanging up in store for months and possibly years? The ugly sisters. So there's selective sampling going on. Scientifically, it's the difference between a designed experiment and an observational study.


I don't believe your statement that the MIM RI ("Classic" series) models have bodies that are made in the USA. Have you seen the photo factory tours? That picture of body blanks doesn't look like a shipment of routed bodies from the US(waiting to be sanded and finished).


2006 Factories Tour

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

Hate to break it to you, but reissue MIM's do put a vaneer on the see through finishes like sunburst. I can say this because mine fell, and took a bit of finish off the corner, and I can see where they put it on the body. AMerican mismatched because no vaneer goes on.

MIA strats are not better than the MIM strats
by todays standards or even the past 3 years
i laugh when i see someone claim the MIA is superior
over the MIM strat. the mexican factory is state of the art
just like the corona factory. i would match my 2006 standard
Fender MIM strat to any Fender MIA strat.

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sombody get me a doctor!

oh i have many MIA strat all from differnt years so i can
compare my MIM to them.


as far as my best MIA strats that would
be my original 1968 and 1970 and my 2007
highway ones.

i lke my 2008 and 1989/2000 american standards
but no weres near as much as the one i stated up top.

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sombody get me a doctor!

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sombody get me a doctor!

Well all I can say is that they are not making bodies in Corona then sending across the border to Ensenada to be used on any of there guitars because that would not be economically prudent to do. So the only way that would happen is if the supplier is supplying the same for them to use and I doubt very much Fender has that done so that there is a distingushable difference maintained between the two in wood and electronics to warrent tha sell price difference. Plus my expeirence tells me venneer except on higher end guitars where you can get book matched on three piece color matched woods.

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The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Thomas Jefferson