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Post subject: vintage 1967 stratocaster specs
Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 1:20 pm
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Hello,

I'm looking for the original vintage 1967 specs like, Neck Radius, frets, picks and so..

thanks in advance


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Post subject: Re: vintage 1967 stratocaster specs
Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 1:24 pm
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Strats in those days didn't come with differing spec's. You bought a strat, that was all the options you got.
The frets would have been a typical vintage size. The neck would have been 7.25"R. The pickups??? You'd probably need to deconstruct a 67 strat pickup to see. Although some boffin may have the bobin, gauss strength and number of winds on record.

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Post subject: Re: vintage 1967 stratocaster specs
Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 7:33 pm
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Check here

http://home.provide.net/~cfh/fender2.html#strat

for info on the "original specs."

1967 seems to be low point in Stratocaster production (in terms of numbers made, not quality).

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Post subject: Re: vintage 1967 stratocaster specs
Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 11:19 pm
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orvilleowner wrote:
1967 seems to be low point in Stratocaster production (in terms of numbers made, not quality).


Quality had in fact begun to circle the CBS drain at this point, primarily with the pickups and general instrument assembly. Guitars began shipping from Fullerton with poorly-installed frets, nut problems, and neck issues. Likewise, FMI ceased the practice of wax-potting the pickups which caused squeals and feedback, and the coil-wire "recipe" was changed to accommodate a cheaper grade of lacquer coating.

That said, these Strats can be made to sound and play well with a modest amount of tweaking and attention.

Arjay

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Post subject: Re: vintage 1967 stratocaster specs
Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 8:32 am
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Retroverbial wrote:
orvilleowner wrote:
1967 seems to be low point in Stratocaster production (in terms of numbers made, not quality).


Quality had in fact begun to circle the CBS drain at this point, primarily with the pickups and general instrument assembly. Guitars began shipping from Fullerton with poorly-installed frets, nut problems, and neck issues. Likewise, FMI ceased the practice of wax-potting the pickups which caused squeals and feedback, and the coil-wire "recipe" was changed to accommodate a cheaper grade of lacquer coating.

That said, these Strats can be made to sound and play well with a modest amount of tweaking and attention.

Arjay


While Fender had started cost cutting I don't think I would say that "Quality had begun to circle the CBS drain at this point" about a 1967; it seems like that was more of a 1970s phenomenon. I've played a few of them and they were really nice guitars. I still regret not buying a '67 I turned up back in 1985 for $650. Of course I didn't get to play one in 1967; I've played about 5 of them between 1985 and last year so they had already been tweaked to play and were in "players" condition - and actually the one I played last summer only lasted 2 weeks at the dealer (at $10,000) while the Leo-era '64 they have (at $18,000) is a dog and is still there.

To me the quality didn't bottom out until about the time I started playing in the late 1970s; there is a much larger difference between a 1967 and a 1977 Strat then there is between a 1962 Strat and a 1967 Strat.

The production was very low in 1967; Fender was contemplating dropping the Strat from their lineup until they noticed that orders starting increasing during the year thanks to kids seeing Hendrix playing them.


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Post subject: Re: vintage 1967 stratocaster specs
Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 9:19 am
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orvilleowner wrote:
Check here

http://home.provide.net/~cfh/fender2.html#strat

for info on the "original specs."

1967 seems to be low point in Stratocaster production (in terms of numbers made, not quality).


for some reason there's nothing there about 67 Strat


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Post subject: Re: vintage 1967 stratocaster specs
Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 10:20 am
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John C wrote:
While Fender had started cost cutting I don't think I would say that "Quality had begun to circle the CBS drain at this point" about a 1967.


Well I am because I saw them with my own eyes, played them with my own hands, and heard them with my own ears.

I part-timed at a music store in '67 (B&G Music -- Belleville, Illinois) and I saw virtually every Fender guitar and amp that the store received that year. Though the '67 Strats were visually identical with my own '66, they all fed back horribly when played at high volumes and many of them needed set-up work or outright repairs before anyone would buy them.

Arjay

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Post subject: Re: vintage 1967 stratocaster specs
Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 11:24 am
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John C wrote:
While Fender had started cost cutting I don't think I would say that "Quality had begun to circle the CBS drain at this point" about a 1967; it seems like that was more of a 1970s phenomenon.


I don't know about that, if you look at pictures of Hendrix's Woodstock Strat you can clearly see that the neck pocket is way oversized for the neck.

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Post subject: Re: vintage 1967 stratocaster specs
Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 11:44 am
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But you got all them problems on pre-cbs guitars too. Strings hanging off the fingerboards and Fender's fix method included in the manual. Infact you still see it today. It's a symptom of a sloppy neck pocket cut. We think the pre cbs days were some kind of golden era and often forget it had it's share of dogs too. What we see these days is the goodies that made it through the years. I wonder exactly how many Strats over the years went the way of the guitars that made up Clapton's Blackie.
As for Hendrix, he was fond of swapping necks anyway. I wouldn't want to assume that a years worth of instruments had sloppy pockets from that one instrument. Or that it's a black mark on quality of the time when it still happens today.

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Post subject: Re: vintage 1967 stratocaster specs
Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 12:22 pm
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Retroverbial wrote:
John C wrote:
While Fender had started cost cutting I don't think I would say that "Quality had begun to circle the CBS drain at this point" about a 1967.


Well I am because I saw them with my own eyes, played them with my own hands, and heard them with my own ears.

I part-timed at a music store in '67 (B&G Music -- Belleville, Illinois) and I saw virtually every Fender guitar and amp that the store received that year. Though the '67 Strats were visually identical with my own '66, they all fed back horribly when played at high volumes and many of them needed set-up work or outright repairs before anyone would buy them.

Arjay


Cool; I can't argue with personal experience; I was 5 years old in '67 :oops: . I guess these 5 '67s that I've played had been fixed up and played in by someone else before I got my hands on them.

If there was that large of a drop-off between '66 and '67, then I'm curious what you thought of the late '70s models. My first hand experience with seeing CBS-era poor production was '81; we got a new Fender dealer who had a wall full of each of the International Colours Strats and every single one of them had a bad neck pocket with the high E hanging off the neck. I think that our old Fender dealer (where I got my Lead II) probably sent the really bad ones back to Fender - which could be why they lost the Fender franchise.


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Post subject: Re: vintage 1967 stratocaster specs
Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 1:46 pm
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John C wrote:
I guess these 5 '67s that I've played had been fixed up and played in by someone else before I got my hands on them.


Indeed, very likely.

Some of the real "baddies" our store received were sent back to Fullerton for repairs. When they were returned, they all came back playing and sounding like the great Strats they were originally built to be.

And in the ensuing years, many of the '67s you've played have doubtless been cared for by folks who knew what they were doing. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with these guitars at all -- I'd grab one in a heartbeat were I to find a bargain.

Arjay

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Post subject: Re: vintage 1967 stratocaster specs
Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 7:39 pm
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univibs wrote:
orvilleowner wrote:
Check here

http://home.provide.net/~cfh/fender2.html#strat

for info on the "original specs."

1967 seems to be low point in Stratocaster production (in terms of numbers made, not quality).


for some reason there's nothing there about 67 Strat


That's because the specs are the same as those of a '66 Strat.

I can't figure out how that new CS '67 relic deserves to be called a '67 ... it's just marketing, nothing else, apparently. If I bought one, I think I'd introduce it to people as my '68 relic ... :wink:

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Post subject: Re: vintage 1967 stratocaster specs
Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 7:41 pm
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John C wrote:
If there was that large of a drop-off between '66 and '67, then I'm curious what you thought of the late '70s models. My first hand experience with seeing CBS-era poor production was '81; we got a new Fender dealer who had a wall full of each of the International Colours Strats and every single one of them had a bad neck pocket with the high E hanging off the neck.



I believe that 1981 was the ABSOLUTE low point quality-wise.

But I'd probably still buy one if the neck wasn't all twisted up ...

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Post subject: Re: vintage 1967 stratocaster specs
Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 10:01 pm
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Quote:
The frets would have been a typical vintage size.


I think by '65 there was a factory option for larger frets... also, I think there might have still been different neck sizes available. I think the radius was always 7.5 though. I'm not sure if these options were still available in '67 but throughout the early/mid 60's there were 3 or four "custom" neck profiles available for order.


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Post subject: Re: vintage 1967 stratocaster specs
Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 10:24 pm
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JamGuy wrote:
Quote:
The frets would have been a typical vintage size.


I think by '65 there was a factory option for larger frets... also, I think there might have still been different neck sizes available. I think the radius was always 7.5 though. I'm not sure if these options were still available in '67 but throughout the early/mid 60's there were 3 or four "custom" neck profiles available for order.


The only cataloged neck options in '67 were selectable widths at the nut, with the neck heels marked as to which spec was used. The "B" was the most common variant with the size annotated by an inkstamp that also included the date that the neck was made. There was an "A" neck that was slightly slimmer than the B plus two wider necks designated "C" and "D" (both the latter extremely rare). In all cases the fretwire remained the same and the radius of the board was 7.25 inches. Around mid-year a maple-cap neck was offered on a limited basis but few were actually made.

HTH

Arjay

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