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Post subject: 1983 fender elite queries ... help please!
Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 2:10 pm
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Hello

My first post here.

I have a Fender Stratocaster "elite" that I bought as a teenager in the 90s as my first decent guitar. I always thought it was rare and unusual but over the years I started to realise that maybe the guitar isn't completely original and had maybe been recreated from parts... so there goes my fortune. On the positive side, I LOVE the guitar, still use it as my main guitar today, it plays like a dream and I just adore it.

ANYWAY! The point is I'd like to look into the possibility of restoring it as accurately as possible to an original Elite stratocaster as possible... and I need your help!

The authentic features seem to be:
- The neck: rosewood fretboard, made in usa serial number E316012, which suggests it was made in 1983, when the Elite's came out. There do, however, seem to be some strange marks where the truss rod hole is... like something has been removed or filled in.
- Machine heads: Opalescent plastic machine heads, with embossed "F" on the back of the machines.
- Proto-silk active pickups, with "fender" written on them
- Button based pick up selector
- Vol pots, with "F" embossed on them
- Trem arm with solid metal knob on the end
- Internal electronics with the active pick up and all the extra bits and pieces you'd expect
- Backplate at the neck join says ""Fender Elite"

All well and good, only:
- The pickguard is for a standard strat and has been overdrilled to accommodate the buttons and the volume knob (which is in a different place)
- The body is bright red and the pain job is dubious... and maybe no the quality you'd expect from the fender production line. Where it's got a few nicks and scratches over the years it seesm to show a black paint underneath !?
- Inside the body cavity seems to have been rather crudely gouged out to accommodate eh additional electronics
- The plastic cover on the back seems to be the standard style, with no small opening at the bottom right, as I have seen on other Elites online (never had the opp. to compare to another real one).
- Standard strat trem, not the other type I've seen on Elites.

Now... it has been suggested that the body doesn't belong to the neck. This is a plausible theory - although if so how come it still has all the electronics and other parts that you'd expect from and Elite? And what could have happened to the original body that it had to be replaced?

So what I’d really like to do, apart from solve them mystery, is find out
i) where I can get an original elite pickguard
ii) find out the original colour of the guitar, or at least the original colour range of the elites…
iii) whether it would be possible to match with a whole elite body…

Any advice or help would be HUGELY appreciated!


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Post subject: Re: 1983 fender elite queries ... help please!
Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 5:52 pm
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Very cool that you've kept your guitar for all these years. Some photos would be helpful for us to see what is going on with the guitar. I can hazard a guess that the small holes on the headstock were for this behind the nut Fender String Lock that they sold back in the day - imagine something similar to the behind-the-nut string clamp that Kahler used to use but with knurled thumbscrews sticking out of it to lock the strings. It was likely removed before you got it; likely the previous owner lost one of the thumbscrews along the way and just removed it.

It does sound like the body was replaced at some point and the Elite electronics added; real Elite bodies didn't have a back cavity for the springs, just the small plate for the mid-boost battery.

There isn't a lot of info out there on the Elites; try looking them up at:

http://www.stratcollector.com

http://www.strat-central.com/

There is also a used guitar shop called Chris's Guitars - they have Elites from time to time and he put together an info page the model that includes a color listing:

http://www.chrisguitars.com/fender-elite.html

I haven't been on that site in 3-4 months; as luck would have it the very first guitar on their home page is a lefy Elite Strat complete with the locking nut; here is the photo:

Image

Here is a photo of the back:

Image


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Post subject: Re: 1983 fender elite queries ... help please!
Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2011 8:12 am
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Hi John,

Thank you very much for this detailed reply! I'll try and get some pictures up in the next few days, however based on what you have said I am pretty certain it must have had a string lock removed, and also that the body is not an elite at all. The battery is just bundled up under the (standard) pickguard.

I am curious as to what could have happened to the original body to make someone swap it... but there we go. Given that it has so many original elite parts to it, I think my best course of action would be to track down a genuine Eite body (I've just seens en Elite precision bas on ebay, so I guess they must come up now and again?) and move all the parts over to that...

Thanks again, as I said I'll post some pics soon!


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Post subject: Re: 1983 fender elite queries ... help please!
Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2011 1:11 pm
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How about the tremolo itself? You mentioned the trem arm (which sounds original) but does your guitar have the entire FreeFlyte trem (like the lefty in the photos I posted)? If you don't have that original trem, then a real Elite body won't help you out; they have an odd routing for some short springs underneath the routing for the pickups; there is no access to the springs without removing the pickguard.

I'm wondering if an owner at some point had issues with the FreeFlyte trem and wanted to convert the guitar to a normal trem - that is likely why they used a replacement body. I have seen a few of the old Elites where the owners replaced the FreeFlyte with a flat-mount Kahler trem; that seems to be the only replacement that really worked on the Elites (and the 2-knob 1983/84 Standard Strats) - although I did see an auction for an Elite where an owner had hacked out the body and hammered in a piece of wood to support a normal vintage-style trem.


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Post subject: Re: 1983 fender elite queries ... help please!
Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2011 12:09 pm
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here are the pics! as you can see it does not have the freeflyte trem.

thanks John for all your advice, based on what you've said and the stuff I've researched online (thanks to your links) I have, in a somewhat Hercule Poirot-esque manner, deduced the following speculative conclusion:

The previous owner bought an Elite stratocaster and liked all of the features EXCEPT the freeflyte trem. They wanted to replace the freeflyte trem with standard trem but relised, to do this, they would have to replace the entire body. They also possibly found that the Elite pickguard did not fit a standard body ? They resprayed the new body, possibly to match the original colour, which may have been "candy apple red". They removed the string lock, presumably because it doesn't work in conjunction with a standard trem. And that's how they arrived at this hybrid.

I'm 85% confident that this is the case. HOWEVER, this doesn't solve the entire mystery:

As I understand it, the Elites came in three varieties, "standard", "gold" and "walnut". Only the gold and the walnut had the pearloid tuning pegs as featured on mine. However, on the gold one all of the other metal parts are gold coloured - suggesting the original Elite could not have been that one... and the walnut one has a walnut headstock, so it can't have been that one either... so i'm thinking either there is yet another variant that had silver parts and the pearloid pegs, or that it's cobbled together from two or more different Elites?

Finally, I notice none of the other Elites I've seen pictured had "fender" written on the pickups?


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Post subject: Re: 1983 fender elite queries ... help please!
Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2011 12:16 pm
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oops - think I posted the photos in the wrong code - hopefully here they are this time!

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Post subject: Re: 1983 fender elite queries ... help please!
Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2011 12:53 pm
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Very interesting guitar - it almost looks like the owner put the Elite neck and electronics on an American Standard.

Just to check myself I pulled out an old Guitar Player magazine I have with an ad for the Strat Elite on the back - from the factory neither the "Fender" on the pickup cover nor the "F" on the knobs were inked in with black; they were just embossed into the plastic.


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Post subject: Re: 1983 fender elite queries ... help please!
Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2011 1:07 pm
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okay that's interesting. Just had another look at the 'fender' logos. They are embossed into the plastic, but filled in with black ink. I've never thought about it before, i suppose the owner could have added the black but it looks professionally done and not crudely added with a pen or anything... so again, not sure if it was issued like this or not...


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Post subject: Re: 1983 fender elite queries ... help please!
Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2011 12:44 am
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i found this post about and elite on a french blog:
http://fr.audiofanzine.com/guitare-sc/fender/Elite-Series-Stratocaster/forums/t.389417,fender-stratocaster-elite-1983.html

I can't understand the text, but the strat pictured (although it's difficult to see becuase it's a small picture) does appear to to have the inked "Fender" on the pick-ups and "F" on the dials. I'm from the uk - I'm wondering whether there was a difference to the ones issues to Europe ? This is the only strat I could find on the internet with the inked logos, all the others - as john pointed out - are just embossed in white.

Also I cannot find a single example of an Elite strat that is neither a Gold or Walnut but DOES have the pearloid tuning pegs...

Also every single Elite that I've been able to find on the iternet and also see the Serial Number of seems to be a later number than mine. Suggesting this may have been an early run of the Elites?

I think I might give-up on the restoration process, as to restore it to all original elite parts - whilst it would add value, would probably cost me the difference in parts. Also, from what I've read about the freeflyte trem the previous owener may have had the right idea (from a playability angle) of changing it back. However the other features, in particular the pick-up selectors and active pickups are awesome, and do give the guitar a killer tone - so much so that when I've played other nornal strats the tone just seems thin and lacks body. So maybe - although it's a shame it's not original - by a weird coincidence of fate I ended with the right guitar for me !?

I suppose the main questions I have left are:
i) can you fit the Elite pickguard to a standard body ? I'd still like to do this if possible...
ii) was there ever an Elite issued with silver metal parts but pearloid pegs?
iii) are the "inked" logos original, or was this done later...

Thanks for all your help with this !


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Post subject: Re: 1983 fender elite queries ... help please!
Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2011 8:12 am
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Nice detective work on that one from the French forum - it also shows that optional string lock/fine tuner device.

I just honestly can't remember from back in 1983/84 about the inked-in logos on the pickups and the knobs. Now that old ad I have on the back of the magazine shows a Gold Elite Strat in candy apple red - I guess it could be that the "regular" Elites had the inked-in logos and the Gold Elites did not have them. Also, those inked-in logos will wear off over time.

I think that I have seen a regular Elite with chrome hardware with the pearloid tuner buttons before, but again after 27/28 years the old memory gets a bit hazy on the little details like that.

Regarding the pickguard - I'm not sure because I don't believe I ever saw an Elite side-by-side with an American Standard but from the photos it looks to me like the Elite bodies were slightly different than the American Standards so I suspect that the original pickguard wouldn't fit. That's likely why whomever modded your guitar didn't use the original Elite pickguard.

Tracking age by the serial numbers can be a bit iffy - Fender typically puts the decals in a bin and a neck finisher grabs a stack for the guitars they are working on. They get out of sequence pretty easily. However, there should be some type of date (or a date code) on the neck itself that will tell you when it was finished (but not necessarily when the original guitar was assembled).


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Post subject: Re: 1983 fender elite queries ... help please!
Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 6:35 pm
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FYI, the jack is located on the lower edge not the face of the instrument on my Elite. The original term was an uber POS & was switched to a Kahler making an already heavy axe weigh what seems a metric ton. Clear-coated ash w/silver mini tuners. Purchased new in '83 & still going strong AND heavy. Eats 9v batteries like popcorn...

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Post subject: Re: 1983 fender elite queries ... help please!
Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 6:38 pm
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Oh, & the skunk stripe in MUCH darker than the stripe on the neck shown. Looks walnut.

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Post subject: Re: 1983 fender elite queries ... help please!
Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 6:55 pm
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From the pics it's clearly partly an Elite! Looks like the owner has ditched the original body because that's not a FreeFlyte trem.

I've got a 1983 "standard" 2-knob strat and I sometimes think about hacking it apart to replace the trem and the cheap output jack on the scratchplate so I'd guess that's what someone's decided to do with your strat. The problem is the way the body is routed for the FreeFlyte prevents you from ever installing a standard trem so the only option is to entirely replace the body and again, it looks like you have maybe a US standard body there? Not sure why the pickguard is non-original, it's clear someone's taken a standard pickguard and drilled holes for the pushbuttons.

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Post subject: Re: 1983 fender elite queries ... help please!
Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 11:08 pm
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FYI Fender did a shortlived model called "Vintage Strat Plus" which was an AVRI fitted with Elite pickups and circuitry. This guitar would be the precursor to the Strat Plus, first introduced 1987.

The original Elite Strat became the basis for the Eric Clapton signature series, which debuted in 1988.

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Post subject: Re: 1983 fender elite queries ... help please!
Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2013 8:04 am
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Always interesting to see a zombie thread that you participated on originally come back to the surface! Yep - that OP from back in 2011 did have basically a Strat Elite/American Standard hybrid: they put the Elite neck and electronics on a Strat Plus body/trem.

@chromeface - from what I've read that "Vintage Plus" never made it out of the prototype phase. I have always been under the impression that FMIC's initial thinking was to stay a pretty small operation here in the USA and only make the AVs and this "Vintage Plus" model (they were probably going to do some kind of "Vintage Plus" Tele and bass models as well), then they decided to develop the American Standard series and head down the road to the large company they are today. Of course by "pretty small" I mean an operation like say G&L or EBMM today that does probably 10,000-20,000 instruments per year compared to Fender's current capacity to do over 120,000 per year.

I read in an old Guitar Player that the "Vintage Plus" prototype Strat was shown at the Summer 1986 NAMM show along with the 4 American Standard prototypes (Strat, Tele, and the 2 basses) but development never went forward after that point in time and they developed the Strat Plus concept instead.


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