I recently bought a sunburst american strat '09 and it had a ugly tortoise shell pickguard on it. The first thing I set out to do was to swap out the pickguard so I dug through my guitar craft box and found an old white SSS pickguard from one of my old strats '98-'00. When it finally came time to put the screws back in I noticed only about 4 screws fit in perfectly the rest dont line up with the pickguard. I'd put up pictures but I dont know how. Has anyone else had this problem? Is there are difference for the older pickguards. This is pissing me off.

Thanks,

Chris

Did you buy the guitar new?
I thought the American Standard Stratocasters came with a white pick guard as seen in this photo (aside from the butterscotch blonde model). If not I would check to see what is exactly original on your guitar and if it has the correct body.

No, the guitar was bought used but the guitar is a 09 model. This has happened before but instead of the screw holes not lining up on my other american strat the pickguard had an extra hole about 2 inches away from the original spot so I just drilled a new one.