this is an incredible find man!! congrats to you! Just the other day on this show on Spike TV (something to do with Pawn shops and storage units) the two main guys found a mint '79 Maui Blue Strat. sold it for 2200.00 to Norm Harris (it's on his site now for 3500)

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Why cant i find these great deals

i heard someone of the facebook page for fender mustangs saying he bought a vintage one for 200 bucks at a garage sale

Looks great to

Have fun you lucky son of a gun

just got home , im going to shine her up a bit with a nice cloth and post some better pictures if i can if anyone interested. this is awesome overload.

gorgeous. I have been looking into purchasing this '74 Hardtail that looks like yours, save for a few mods, for like 1850ish. but yeah yours could sell for over 2k easily since it is in such incredible shape.

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Terriffic Score Dj..........

Hi again dj57: the one thing that concerns me here is those tuners. I don't know every detail of Strat features through the '70s so I don't know if that is the model of tuner that is supposed to be on there. But I have never seen machineheads as crookedly applied as that come out of the factory. That is cack handed work indeed and suggests to me a user mod. I presume someone has put those tuners on at a later date and not done a very good job at it.

If that was after all done at the factory - well then that would show just how bad things had got by the end of the '70s. But I doubt it.

I'm just warning you because it is the sort of thing a vintage guitar dealer or collector will look for: it suggests your guitar though in very good condition is not quite "stock" and that will take a little off the top possible price.

It's still an amazingly good bargain though!

And you could always check whether those are the correct model tuners and then have the screw holes plugged with wood and then redrilled for perfect alignment. Then the neck really will be as good as new.

Any which way: you scored the bargain of the year, far as this Forum is concerned. Congrats!

Cheers - C

Used till 77 according to Provide.net.



With some of the shoddy work that came out of Fullerton in the latter years of CBS. I am not too suprised at the line of the tuners. It's a very minor issue after all.
What I would question is whether they can be straightend out. It looks to me like the line of the tuners is dependant on hole spacing. In other words the line of them can't straighten out any because there isn't room.

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Actually they were used up until the 80s as well. "Dan Smith" strats had them too and they came out in '82 IIRC. Nothing wrong with those tuners Ceri, they are correct for the guitar and don't really look too tampered with or crooked to me

Congrats on that find. really beautiful guitar. What are those white stains on the back? Or is just the lights. One thing that puzzles me is the bridge though. Aren't there supposed to be screws in the top of the bridge, just where it meets the pickguard. Perhaps it's an original bridge. Fender applied various types of hardware in those years.

Anyway, the guitar looks great!

Onno

As suspected, their not even straight on the new 70's RI's





Another 70's with crooked tuners



Obviously a design flaw. The Flange of the tuners is slightly too wide for the peg hole spacing. A blind man could see they aint straight.

I don't see it as a problem, a minor niggle at worst.

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No no and no

Hi again guys: as to the model of tuners, if people say it's the right one for a Strat of that date then that's fine. However:

Gosh, I do politely beg to differ. They are wildly crooked: a child with a steel rule could do better. Take a look at the B string tuner for example. And compare the line all of them make with the edge of the headstock.

Man, that's poor. You've never seen me dissing CBS Fenders on this Forum, but if that work really came out of the Fullerton factory then it speaks more eloquently for the lamentable state things had got to by the late '70s than anything I've recently come across. No wonder the Japanese were spanking the backside of the West's industry at the time.


Well, to be sure, each of those is at a slight angle to one another. But they are all set at the same angle, so there is a level of intention on that RI that is not seen on the real thing, apparently.


As I say, they could be straightened by dowelling the holes and redrilling. But I guess if this is really how it came off the production line then we don't want to do that because it would hurt the "as original" value of the thing.

And ultimately that is what matters to the new owner. If these tuners are as a knowledgeable dealer/collector would expect to see then the resale value isn't damaged.

And just to stress again: it's a heck of a find at the price and a total bargain! I'm just nit-picking over the tiny details here: nothing that should spoil dj57's pleasure in any way at all. Play it and enjoy it!

Cheers - C

thanks everyone for the information and help. As for the tuners i took some different angle shots so you can compare more. But regardless of that point no vintage guitar collector will be getting the chance to "look" over her. She be mine !

And ya those are just the flash and my room lights on the back of the guitar.

I personally don't think the angle is too bad. sure it isn't perfect, but don't forget that by the late '70s, CBS Fender was a sloppy out of control mess of a company and they were cutting corners on production left and right.

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+1

I see nothing historically amiss here.

(plenty wrong with FMI's QC/QA back then of course, but we're all aware of that)

This guitar wasn't only a steal for our new member -- it's a keeper as well.

RAWK ON!

Arjay

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