I'm looking for info on which strat models / years have the truss rod wood stripe at the back of the neck and why is there a wood stripe rather than not? Thanks for any info.

The Maple neck/ Maple Fretboard will have them, except for the short period of time when they used a maple slab for a fretboard rather than the usual one piece neck/ fretboard.

The necks with a rosewood fretboard won't have the stripe.

The strip is used to fill in the channel cut into the neck to install the trussrod.
On one piece necks this is done from the back of the neck, to leave the fretboard pristine looking. People don't usually see the back of the neck when you play.

On a neck with a rosewood fretboard the channel is merely cut in the face of the neck, then hidden when the fretboard is glued on.

So with only an exception for the 2 piece maple/maple necks. All years of Maple/Maple will have the stripe, and never at all with the rosewood.

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

Thanks for the reply. That makes sense.

Almost right twelvebar but many strats with a rosewood fretboard also have the skunk stripe!

I stand corrected, just view my post as a generality then!

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

So, any particular reason to go with the stripe even with a rosewood board?

The stripe (or absence of) has no impact on the sound or performance of the guitar.

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Bill

It looks good................

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speak slowly I'm a drummer too!!

And I proudly lack a stick or a kazoo up my arse...........

I believe it was to streamline production.

Okay, here's the deal on the "skunk stripe" as I know it - it was used on the one-piece maple fingerboard necks from the very beginning (circa 1950 for the Broadcaster/Nocaster/Telecaster; 1954 for the Stratocaster) until Fender switched to rosewood fingerboards in circa 1959.

From 1959 through about 1969 the guitars did not have a skunk stripe; the truss rod was installed from the front of under the rosewood fingerboard. This was also true when Fender brought back the maple fingerboard circa 1966 - they used separate maple fingerboards from 1966 through 1969. However, there were also one-piece maple necks with a skunk stripe in 1969 and 1970 - they made them both ways.

Starting in 1971 the bullet truss rod models used both the skunk stripe and separate fingerboards (both rosewood and maple) on Strats. They have continued to have them on everything but the reissue models since then.

However, Strats went back to the 1-piece maple fingerboard necks on "The Strat" in 1980 and on the "regular" Stratocaster in 1982 (the Smith Strats) but on these models the rosewood boards also had skunk stripes. All subsequent "modern" models have had the skunk stripe on both maple and rosewood board models.

Thanks John for that info. That's a very thorough history of the skunk stripe.

On the smith strats they had the skunk stripe because the rosewood boards were not slabs they were only a very thin laminate. Having the truss rod chanel underneath it would lead to poor intergrity in the thin rosewood laminate.

While I've played a pretty good range of Strat over the years (I started playing in '79 so I've played new model Strats of every year since then; the oldest I ever got my hands on was I believe a '63, followed by a couple of '64s, a few '65s, and a couple of '67s - one '67 in particular I should have bought when I could have gotten it cheap in 1985) but I've never been able to compare a Smith to the earlier round lam fingerboards side-by-side. Are they really that much thinner than the round lam boards used from circa late 1962 on into 1971 (pre-bullet truss rod)?

Of course they were using the skunk stripe on the bullet truss rod models which do have fairly thin round lam fingerboards.