Is there any documentation of the pre-production run Stratocasters from early/mide 1954? How many were actually made before the first production run in October and roughly how many are still accounted for today? We all know about David Gilmour's famous serial # 0001 Strat. Are there any other well-documented low serial number Strats? How many other early Strats were "custom" models? In the book The Stratocaster Chronicles there is a strange Carl Wilson quote regarding this subject:

"I feel really fortunate because I have a Stratocaster, which was the first one Fender made; not the prototype, but the first production model. It's a wonderful guitar."

Now I don't recall ever seeing him playing a '50s era Strat, but it's possible that he bought it in the '70s or '80s and didn't bring it out much. It doesn't give a date for that quote but you would think that something this significant would be better documented.

How many Strats were made from March through September 1954?

That's a good question.

The first 200 (or so) Strats had their serial number on the plastic trem cavity cover ... these were made "pre-production."

When the Strat serial number switched to the neck plate, numbers from 0001 to about 1200 were used; then the serial numbers on Strats jumped into the 6000 range (to bring them in line with the rest of the instruments being made -- so that the various instruments didn't have their own sequence of serial numbers).

I couldn't find any direct information on when, during those early neck plate serial numbers, that first "official" order production began. There is a report that bodies were stockpiled in July '54.

The complicating fact is: the serial numbered neck plates were not used sequentially as the guitars were assembled. Perhaps an estimate could be fashioned from analyzing the serial number/date information in James Werner's "book" of Fender serial numbers.

I do own one of those so-called pre-production Strats: a nice one-piece ash bodied guitar with a trem cavity date of 7/54 ...

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

Thanks for the info - very cool! I wasn't even aware of the Strat Central website. I will have to check that out...