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Post subject: American Vintage '59 Strat with wrong pickguard?
Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2014 1:17 pm
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Months back I bought a very lightly used Vintage '59 Stratocaster in 3-color sunburst with a maple neck. It has on it an 11-hole, 3-ply very slight green pickguard. I didn't think anything of it, since the yellow in the burst has a greenish tinge to it.

Anyway, someone on another forum said that the maple neck Vintage '59 Strats have a single ply white 8-screw pickguard. I did some checking, and that looks to be the case. I called the factory and the young guy I spoke with check the serial number, and said it should have a white single ply 8-screw pickguard.

I unscrewed the pickguard, and there's 11 holes. The pattern for the 8-hole guard is different, and there's no other holes, so this is likely to be the original guard (still has the plastic on it), as I'm the 2nd owner.

I was concerned about having a parts guitar, so I removed the neck and looked at all of the markings. They seem to be correct. The neck cavity is stamped "Aug 1 2012", "93571" (the 571 is the 3 color sunburst code), "Sanchez", and has "#1" stamped in small letters in five different places.

The flat of the base of the neck is stamped "93384", has a big letter "C" in red pen or marker, has what looks like "VILLALPANO" stamped in black, and has four letters "N" "E" "E" and "G" in either a sequence or pairs. I've seen similar markings on other late model Fender necks.

So, did the factory put the wrong pick guard on? What do you think?


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Post subject: Re: American Vintage '59 Strat with wrong pickguard?
Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2014 1:24 pm
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The pickguard should be either an 8 hole single ply, or a 10 hole triple ply.
The 11 hole triple ply wasn't used until sometime in 1960.

Another thing to consider is the position of some of the screws.
Any chance of a picture?

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Post subject: Re: American Vintage '59 Strat with wrong pickguard?
Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2014 1:30 pm
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Ooops. Brain fade. It's a 10-hole.

From what I was told on the other forum, and from what I've read, the maple necks got 8-hole guards while the rosewood slab necks got the 10's. (I just typed "11" again and had to correct. Duh.)


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Post subject: Re: American Vintage '59 Strat with wrong pickguard?
Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2014 1:46 pm
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Generally what you've said is true, maple fingerboard 1 ply, rosewood 3 ply.
That's not to say that there haven't been maple fingerboard Strats with 3 ply or rosewood with single ply.
Parts bins were used until they were empty, and there would have been variants on the commonly accepted norms.

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Post subject: Re: American Vintage '59 Strat with wrong pickguard?
Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2014 1:56 pm
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Thanks, Stratmangler2. That's what I've been figuring. I've read that Fender (and Gibson, and Jaguar cars, and a zillion other manufacturers) will sometimes grab an available part and install if there's none of the "correct" ones available, and the "incorrect" one makes no difference.

It's hard to convince some people of that, though. They think the guitar is a fake.


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Post subject: Re: American Vintage '59 Strat with wrong pickguard?
Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2014 2:02 pm
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With Fender I would suspect that a '59 rosewood with single ply guard is more common than maple with 3 ply.
A maple with 3 ply could be a custom order - they didn't lose the ability to do one piece maple necks after they'd switched production over to rosewood slab fingerboards.

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Post subject: Re: American Vintage '59 Strat with wrong pickguard?
Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2014 12:18 am
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