Hey everyone....i recently bought a Fender strat body on ebay and it was Listed as a 57 reissue USA fender strat body from 1996.
.it seems to be a thick poly finish....i asked the seller if it had a nitro finish he said yes.
It looks to be a 3 piece alder body, with a nice burst. (for my relic 57 build in progress)
Now my question is.......
-im not sure if its a usa body?
-Does it have a nitro or poly finish?

i supplied som pics for you guys to determine.
thanks

I can tell you that USA Vintage Reissue guitars do not have any circular jig-holes that American deluxes and standards have.
However I have to question that cresent shape in the middle pickup cavity.
Also the finishing in the control cavity, that looks a bit scrappy.

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No no and no

Well...I'm no expert here so hopefully a few others will chime in but here's a few basic observations on my part...

First, I doubt anyone here is going to be able to tell whether the finish is poly or nitro from pictures. Sorry but I think to really be able to definitively make that determination, a person with experience in finishes would have to look at it in person. That said however, -if- it were Nitro, being a (allegedly) 14 year old body I would suspect it to be showing some signs of alderization...and I'm not seeing that in these pics (again really hard to tell though). If the finish isn't showing any signs of "settling" in to the wood the way lacquer tends to do, I would suspect poly myself.

The single coil routing, the two tone sunburst and the 8 hole pickguard would obviously be consistent with a 50's reissue. That said, from what I can see in these pictures I have to say that the tooling does also look rather consistent with my '85 MIJ (which also has the 8 hole pickguard but isn't specifically marked as a reissue body...although the neck is a '62 reissue based on the numbers). Now I can't speak for the bodies that came out of Japan in the 90's but I will say that the MIJ's from the 80's are simply great instruments...nothing wrong with MIJ at all in my book. To that I would add however that typically speaking, MIJ bodies are, more often than not, basswood and not alder...and from a couple of pics there, the body does appear to be alder to my eyes (although again difficult to tell from a picture). I know there are -some- MIJ alder bodies out there but again most MIJ's were typically basswood.

I also find the double date stamps on the neck pocket interesting...never saw that before. It's a bit hard to read but to me it looks like there's actually two different dates on that sucker...interesting. The red stamp looks like it reads "Sept 24, 1996" but the black stamp almost looks like it reads "Sept 17, 1999". I'm not sure what, if anything, that means but it does seem a bit strange.

I'm curious...have you measured the spacing for the bridge screws? I would certainly check that...if it's metric screw spacing, that would certainly indicate "import". On the other hand if it's standard, that doesn't really say anything...my '85 MIJ actually has standard (vintage) screw spacing as well.



Now with that all said, I have a question; if for some reason it turns out that this body wasn't made in the US...or if it turns out to be poly instead of nitro, are you just gonna scrap it or return it or something? Based on the pics here, to me that looks like a very fine Strat body regardless of where it was made and it looks like a very lovely finish to say the least...I'm not sure I can really see what the big deal is here. Personally, I wouldn't sweat it...I'd just build the crap out of that puppy and enjoy it!

Anyways, again just my personal opinions there...hopefully someone with a sharper eye will be of more help.

Peace,
Jim