Greetings all, great site!

Does anyone know how many Elite Strats were made? I know they were made for one or two years, just curious how many were produced. Thanks in advance.

A quick search didn't show any quantity of produced models, but Wiki has this info :

The Elite Stratocaster was introduced in 1983 and discontinued in 1984. It served as a template for the Eric Clapton signature model of 1988.

The Elite Stratocaster was discontinued in late 1984, due to performance problems generally associated with the unsuccessful Freeflyte bridge.

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Thanks for helping out Mike, I also found ther Wiki info a few days ago. I was hoping that some of you seasoned Fender gurus on the boards would know how to get the info. Maybe someone will drop in and point me in the right direction.

I'm getting ready to make a purchase on an Elite. I'm a big Ty Tabor fan and Im looking to put together his original rig. The missing piece is the Elite. I was hoping to obtain as much info as possible before buying.

Thanks again!

Hello Briguy331,

Fender doesn't relaese productions figures much,
which is OK by me as it is their business.

FWIW, I owned an elite for many years,
it was a good guitar, held tuning, and was well made.
The tremolo system was different but never gave me a problem.

Best of luck on your purchase.
Post a photo if you get one.

Cheers.

Thanks for the info Mr. Bill. I will post a picture once I have it in hand. I've owned many Fenders over the years, but this is the one I've wanted for a while now. Getting excited

Good luck on your purchase, and it is definitely an ax I would grab if I came across one.

Thanks, IMO the Elites were tone monsters. Looking forward to running it through my Lab Series L5, which should be arriving this weekend.

Thanks for the bit of info. The one I purchased is a USA model. I've owned a few Japanese strats before, as well as Mexican strats, and they were decent guitars. This time around I wanted to sink the money on a US model and get what I really wanted.

You can get a lot of info on these types of Strat's from Xhefri. He travels a lot so he may not have logged on to reply. You can look around on his great web site at

http://www.xhefriguitars.com

He doesn't have a specific page for ELITE Strat's but I have a sense that if anyone knows about them, he may.

Thanks Chicagoblue, very helpful info.

Find A.R.Duchossoir's authoritative paper back on the Stratocaster. There's an informative section devoted to the Elite and how it transitioned into the Plus Series and eventually the EC guitar. Also see Tom Wheeler's
book The Stratocastesr Chronicles.

Doc

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"Another day in paradise!"

My new Elite


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NICE! Here's mine:

Here's a MIJ Elite Strat. You'll notice that this guitar has a 22-fret neck with a 9.5" radius. Fender Japan discontinued the Elites in 1986.