Well in the summer of 2004 my tender 12 year-old self spent £200 on what I was told was a MIJ fender strat.
It didn't take me long to realise that it wasn't actually the 1962 stratocaster that the neck plate serial number suggested.
But it does have an interesting history. By the looks of the saddles and machine heads, bits are from a fender late 70s reissue of some kind. The electronics have nice fabric covered wires with MIJ pots and a USA 5-way switch. and most intriguingly the pickups are called "Cairnes ultimax"- A pickup the internet has never heard of. However, cairnes did make pickups for burns in the 60s so my guess is they are pretty old. At any rate they sound great.
Sadly, with a new guitar in hand my 14 year old self spray painted it black (very badly) and attached a horrible gold scratchplate. The aged saddles ceased to be adjustable, eventually leading to 11th fret to be unplayable on some strings. At this point it was sent to the attic.
This spring I got a squier neck for it which was duly attached but the variation in saddle height continued to make it unplayable so it briefly became a slide guitar. Now with a long holiday ahead I've decided to do it justice and restore it.
As it was:
If anyone can identify where any bits may have come from I'd be really interested.
So today I pulled the nut out the neck (Last one had been filed to a super low action which was not helping fret buzz) and after several hours with sandpaper ended up with this:
Any idea what the wood is?
Now I've got to paint it!
I'm thinking off white, get that nice vintage vibe (Reusing the original tortoiseshell pickguard).
Thoughts?
