I knew I was right..

When I was a kid dreaming of being the next Buddy Holly I sent off for a music catalogue, I spent most of my time at school looking at the guitars and drawing them in the back of the exercise books. Well I always remember the strat having a kind of wave curve on the headstock but I have never been able to find one until quite by chance I found a copy of the catalogue online.

Does anyone know what make this is?

http://personal.inet.fi/surf/lorse/bellcatalogue/29.jpg

The Strat never had a headstock shaped like that. Looks to me like a poorly reproduced photo.

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Bill

Hi jamesb64, welcome to the Forum.

When does that catalogue come from - early '70s, I expect? What you're seeing there is just a paste up designer's slip of the scissors. Kids today think the phrase "cut-and-paste" is a term coined by Adobe Photoshop, but back in the pre-computer days page layout was done by literally cutting pieces out and pasting them together on a sheet known as a "mechanical", which would then be rephotographed. That's why the picture quality is often so bad - because it's a photo of a photo of a... etc - and that's why you sometimes see outline errors, like that one around the headstock.

The outline of the Strat body around the forearm contour is none too perfect either, and the tuner buttons on both guitars are pretty irregular. But then given that the freshly graduated graphic designer doing the paste up in all likelihood wasn't a musician and had little idea what a guitar was meant to look like he didn't necessarily do such a bad job.

So, as bluesky says, no Fender ever really looked like that.

Anyhow. Is this the catalogue that page comes from?

http://personal.inet.fi/surf/lorse/bell ... logue.html

I never knew that particular shop, though it seems not to have been so far from where I lived in west London in those days; but the memory of hours spent leafing through pages that looked very similar to that certainly takes me back! Ah, nostalgia...

Cheers - C

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Thanks guys

I admit part of me is heartbroken but at least the mystery is solved

Yes it was the Bells Catalogue I think about 73 - 75

James

No worries man - I've been loving the trip down memory lane, looking through that catalogue. For example, the first band I was ever in ran it's tiny PA through exactly the Carlsbro amp on this page - the 60/5, if I'm recalling it right:

http://personal.inet.fi/surf/lorse/bellcatalogue/51.jpg

Though we didn't have Carlsbro speakers, we ran that amp into WEM speakers something like these:

http://personal.inet.fi/surf/lorse/bellcatalogue/45.jpg

Hee-hee - I think those would probably be highly collectable nowadays. But we just kicked ours around without a care. I doubt ours are still out there in someone's possession somewhere, they'll have disintergrated long ago...

For great giggles guys might want to take a look at the FX pedals page:

http://personal.inet.fi/surf/lorse/bellcatalogue/72.jpg

Essentially, wah and fuzz. Those were your options in those days (1974, it turns out). Kids today don't know they're born! [Ceri settles down for a nice old-foggie rant...]

Cheers - C

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