I went to check it out yesterday and here are the pics, can you guys tell anything from these? Look like a real Strat body? It sounded like a million bucks I know that! Thanks again for helping, I'm planning to decide on this one by tomorrow.

When I took off the pickguard I found that the bridge pickup is not original. It's instead a Dimarzio HS-3.

fhopkins if you're around please let me know what you think,

Anyone else with input let me know also, i'll have to decide on this one by Monday. Thanks in advance friends.

anyone else have input?

Sorry I'm not much help but I've told you all I know and directed you to different sites. I don't want the responsibility of telling you to buy or not. That's your call. Maybe someone more educated on 83 strats can help.Good luck!

Maybe if you re-name your topic to say--Is this a fake or real-- you'll get more response. There are a lot of posters on here that love a challenge like that!

hey fhopkins thanks for all your help my friend.

how do i change the topic name?

Go to your first post and hit the edit button. Then delete your topic name and add new. I'm surprised more members have not chimed in. For all I know you could be looking at a Dan Smith strat. I'm just not knowledgeable enough on that era to tell you with certainly. If you google "1983 strat" a lot of info will appear and you can search.

thanks again, i made a new topic so i hope i dont get any backlash for that. i just want to go ahead and get it before he sells it to anyone else because if it IS real, 850 seems like a really good deal since ive seen others in the same condition going for 1000+

Hi dbr2026: only just seen this thread.

I don't think anyone has yet mentioned that the bridge is Fender's short-lived FreeFlyte system. If you look round the back you will find no spring cavity or string loading holes, because the whole thing is contained within the front routing - as shown in the picture at the top of the second page of this thread.

That was done in the early '80s (last years of CBS's ownership of Fender) as a cost cutting measure. Those bridges were very unpopular at the time and were discontinued after about 18 months or so.

That model has a certain novelty value now and some people like them for their unusualness. But prices don't get very high for a guitar of that age, from memory usually mid to upper hundreds of dollars, no more.

On the plus side, you can be pretty certain it's real. Nobody would fake that particular model.

If, as you say, "it sounds a million dollars", well, that's all that counts, isn't it?

BTW: the previous owner certainly liked playing at the ninth fret, didn't he?

Good luck - C

Ceri thanks for the reply, in the other topic I made someone mentioned that this is a Fender "bullet" body. What does that mean? I'm guessing it's not a true strat body?

Hi dbr2026: the body of your 1983 is perfectly legit - it was just a very unpopular model, because of the non-traditional front-only body route.

Oh, and the missing third knob and the fact that the jack socket is moved to the pickguard - another cost-cutting effort.

For interest's sake, here's Fender's Patent Drawing for the FreeFlyte bridge, which explains how it works:



If you decide to buy it I'd think about haggling a little over the price if I were you. It seems a touch steep, judging by others we've seen here on the Forum. That's merely an opinion though...

Cheers - C

I was thinking it was steep too, I actually talked him down from 950 to 800. What would you estimate the value to be just based on your knowledge, as I am still really new to guitars and trying to learn what to look for.

Also, it's a true Strat body and not a Bullet body?

Hi again dbr2026: I haven't seen your other thread, but that isn't a Fender Bullet. This is a Bullet:

http://www.vintage-guitars.se/1981_Fend ... 103711.htm

I can never remember the correct name off the top of my head, so I have just been and looked it up in Tony Bacon's "Fender" book: the official name of that guitar is the "1983 Stratocaster Standard second version". Google that for more info.

It was discontinued the following year, which is why you don't see many of them around.

Far as pricing is concerned: I'm definitely no expert, but I recall a thread last year where someone posted that he'd paid $850 for one of these and a row of other people promptly replied that it was far too high and they'd paid around $500 for the same model. Ebay sales at the time seemed to support that.

But then $850 for a guitar that sounds like a million dollars might be quite a bargain...?

Cheers - C

Here is another link to read. Scroll down the television like page and it gives you all the details.
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/11389887/Fe ... itars-1983

Looks like they are selling on ebay for around 4 to 5 hundred.