I just bought a MIJ Strat for a great price. It's pretty much brand new with the stickers and plastic still on it. The guy said he bought it at the local guitar store for over $500 last year. The problem is, I don't see where you can buy MIJ strats in the states anymore. Everything I've read indicates that they quit selling them stateside in the 90s? I also searched this message board and did the serial lookup and my serial number is not found. The Made in Japan text is on the front of the headstock.

The guitar is beautiful. It plays very nice. The craftsmanship is every bit what you'd expect from a genuine Fender guitar. It even has the pickups that say "Noiseless" on them - indicating a higher quality pickup. I'll attach pictures in the morning, I just want to make sure that I didn't get a copy or something.

Any help is much appreciated. Thank you

Here's the pix:

I was looking for a MIM and I was planning on putting in the 'Noiseless' hot pickups to bring it up to the sound quality of an American Strat. Then I stumbled across this guy selling this, which already has them. I read that the MIJ's a are step up from the MIM's but still not quite as good as the USA strats. Sounds good to me. So I meet with him and look at the guitar in person and it's immaculate. If it's a fake, they went through a LOT of trouble to imitate all the little details on Fender guitars.

So I get home with it and I want to find out more information about it - year produced, the electronics in it, etc etc and then I find out that the serial isn't in the database. Then I start reading about the fake Fenders and that's what got me nervous. This is from the wiki:

"Fender Japan Stratocasters and Squiers were exported in the 1980s and 1990s but are now mostly limited for sale to the Japanese domestic market."

After reading that I was thinking that there was no way for someone to buy a MIJ in the states. I also read that they changed the wording to CIJ after they limited it to domestic Japan only. There's a lot of information out there on this, unfortunately, you have to wade through it all to find the truth.

Thank you for your reply, the way you broke down the serial makes sense. I hope you're right. I have an email into Fender just to be safe. I talked the guy down to $200 for the guitar - and that's why I didn't run home and do a serial check, I jumped. If anyone else has any additional insight, I'm all ears...

Theres a lot of variations on the japanese serial prefix's. You need to email customer services about the issue. A friend of mine had a lefty 89 mij with a weird prefix. Got letters of validation from fender and still got the guitar branded a fake by 3 buyers. Despite the validation letter. In the end it went to a buyer in newcastle who collects lefty MIJ's who didnt ask once

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No no and no

Or you can learn japanese and ask those guys directly:

http://www.fender.jp/

I already checked the Japanese site. I actually took 4 years of Japanese so some of it actually makes sense. The site is incomplete. It doesn't even show a lineup of current strats. There's also no contact page. It's a piece...

I got it from a guy who knows nothing about guitars. He never played it and thought it cost around $550 new - but it was a gift to him so he wasn't sure. He was asking $275... I negotiated.

$200 is possible, very, very good price indeed, most are well over $300. I probably would have done the same thing.

$200 is possible, very, very good price indeed, most are well over $300. I probably would have done the same thing.

$200 is possible, very, very good price indeed, most are well over $300. I probably would have done the same thing.

It looks fake to me. Probably Chinese. Here's what's wrong:

1) the "made in japan" font
2) the shape of the heel of the neck
3) the position of the screws on the tremolo back cover
4) way too many digits in the serial number
5) it looks like a two-piece maple neck (a slab maple fingerboard over maple)
6) the 12th fret dot markers are WAY too wide (the real giveaway!)

Here's the web site that gives the current Japan Only Fender models:
http://www.fenderjapan.co.jp

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

Wish I could see the picture but from work it's blocked.