I think the 3 holes are there for the jig that the body is made in my 2006 MIM has 1 hole in the same area.

Some are for painting

Your MIM Strat might have something in common with vintage strats. You might be interested to learn that one of the things to look for in a vintage Strat are 3 small holes where nails were put in to allow the guitar to be raised up and the paint to dry.

Have a read here - & there are pics too. Click on the 'inside a 1954 Stratocaster' at the top to learn about the nail holes.

http://home.provide.net/~cfh/fender.html#intro

Rich

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"I started out with nothing ...and I've still got most of it left!" (Seasick Steve)

I started a thread on the GP magazine forum as I am refinishing a MIM Strat. We came to two possible conclusions - the holes are either tone pockets are stash chambers Nah, they are obviously machining or painting locators is all, no need to bash our beloved Fender.

At the factory small quotients of mojo are inserted into those holes by a skilled craftsman using a secret formula. Removing the pickguard and neck in an uncontrolled environment allows the mojo to be released into the air, resulting briefly in a very slightly more hip atmosphere but doing catastrophic harm to the cool of the guitar.

The huge amounts paid for vintage instruments is because they are taken off to certain dens of the cognoscenti where they are "popped" for the first time and the mojo is inhailed by those gathered around, pressing in close, their nostrils widened in ecstatic anticipation. These people can later be recognised in the street by the barely detectable hint of "guitar face" they betray. It's a select and exclusive Masonic brotherhood and you have to know what you are looking for to spot the signs:





The alternate theory was given in the very first weeks of the Fender Forum by an employee of the company, back when such folks bothered to look in here - that the holes are simply for CNC routing machine alignment.

However, that has been dismissed by those in the know as a smoke screen, and conspiracy theorists would make much of the fact that posts during the early days of the Forum have now effectively been made unsearchable by having all their dates reset as 01 January 1970 - a date noted in history for its infamous un-hipness. (Click on page 305 of this Strat Forum's listings if you don't believe me.)

Fender want to bury that theory, and this just shows how far they will go to do it.

Now you know the truth.

Cheers - C

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Infallible Web Dogma reign o'er me!

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What do you have against Unix time?

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I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet.

An entire dating system derived from the width of Elvis's bell-bottoms at an exact point in time.

To this day typing "+%s" into certain operating systems produces a representation of where his flairs would be now, had he lived. The FBI made some forward calculations, realised the horrible truth and on 16 August 1977 they acted. An awful price was paid to save global civilisation.

You can belive it, kids: you read it on the internet.

Cheers - C

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Working hard to generate Infallible Web Dogma for the advancement of humanity.

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Truly, this fact is infallible.


Still, there's so much obscurity in this world. To set that straight, I will let slip that the three holes in that strat body are in fact made by the same species who made these:








And fortunate for Mr C here, they also made below artefact to prove him right:







Which brings us to the one and only consistent and dependable truth in life: Elvis lives.

A cheery day to all,

Nutter

Ceri,
Best...reply....EVER. If you're ever in Cincinnati dinner is on me. I hope you don't mind that I copy/pasted this (except the pics, they didn't want to go) into my "Operation Blue Strat" thread at the guitar player forum. I know it's true, I read it on the internet.
So many thanks I can barely express at this time!
L.B.

I've mentioned this once before on the Forum - apologies for repetitiveness. However:

Bill Bailey suggested that if we really wanted to know the truth we could genetically engineer wheat to have the properties of Velcro. Then we'd just wait for the UFOs to arrive to do their cheeky work and they'd be caught for us to see them there the next morning.

Of course, as Bill pointed out this rather depends upon the UFOs happening to have the corresponding Velcro glued to their undersides...

Cheers - C

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Hi LB: you are very welcome. I'm anyone's for dinner!

However, please feel free to copy the photos too. They help the thing along. They're lodged at my Photobucket account: those links should work in a post on any forum.

Anyhow. What's for supper? Shall I bring a bottle?

Cheers - C

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A proud member of the Sock Brigade

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Thank you so much, Bill!
...off to the laboratory. Again. Ughh.



Ceri: Are you saying Elvis was an alien? His son-in-law most certainly was...

I wasn't - but in fact that is indeed a proven truth. His song Are You Loathsome Tonight? was him making an explicit reference to his great-aunt - the dozen-tenticled slime beast from Alpha Centauri.

Cheers - C

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Socks

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Hmmmm.....I'm looking at the Fender Custom Shop listing with prices and I see that for $1600 I can specify the total weight. I figure you got yourself a custom shop body that someone backed out on. Congratulations. They were removing another 1/100th of a pound with those holes.

:>)

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2002 mim Telecaster
Jimmie Vaughan Stratocaster
Mexican HSS Stratocaster
6 non-fender guitars
2 kids (not for sale)
1 wife (uh....no comment)