Was the old body the original '61?
No Philly, it is a sad story....
I got the guitar in 82 or 83 and it had a humbucker in the bridge position, which also cut the original nitro guard. The body had been stripped with a disk sander and then been brush painted dulux baby blue. The additional routing for the humbucker was done with a blunt chisel and after I had it 4 years the body split just in front of the bridge. I picked up a basswood body in Engalnd and had it nitro'd black and used that for about 4 or 5 years, and then found 'Wood n Guitars' in the US who made replica bodies and sprayed them in nitro. I got an olympic white on swamp ash (which of course is wrong for the 60's), and asked them to age it. You can see the body in photo 1. When I picked up my 64 from John, I asked him about refrets, and then we got talking and he was up for creating an original body. If you actually see it in the flesh the chips don't look as bird-shotty as the flash makes them. My original 63 burgandy mist has chips in the lacquer too - as it hardens and cracks it also gets brittle. With the new body, as the cracks and chips appear, you strat to see the sunburst underneath, which also makes them more obvious because the edge ones have a black line around them. Anyway, the other 2 bodies are in use and the white strat with the aframosa neck is the body that used to be on this. My black strat with a maple/ebony neck is the other body (H/S/S with SM/Sultan/Sultan all AII).
