- Style: Pre-CBS Body (worm route) for Fender Stratocaster
- Wood: Two-piece Swamp Ash (American) or Two-piece Alder (Japanese).
- Finish: Nitrocellulose Custom Candy Apple Red undercoat, Olympic White overspray (reliced)
- Routing: 3 Single Coil
- Weight: approx. 4lbs (1.8kg)
During the 1960s Fender was very inconsistent in using undercoats in their custom colour finishes. Although usually if there was an undercoat at all it would be white primer, there are also a significant number of examples of original finish vintage Fender instruments with other undercoats. Of these instruments, it is common to see sunburst finishes appear beneath solid and metallic finishes, most likely because at the time it was quicker, easier, and cheaper to spray another colour over the top of a poor sunburst finish rather than scrap the body or strip it back down and start again.
More unusually in these bodies (but still common enough for them to avoid being dismissed as a one-offs) is custom colours with undercoats consisting of other Fender custom colours. It is thought that these examples are most likely the result of either a poor first coat (as with the sunbursts mentioned above), resulting on the factory spraying an altogether different colour over the top to disguise the first poorer finish, or else the product of a rush order skipping place in the Fender production line resulting in an already-started body being reassigned to a different colour. Finally there are also examples of Fender guitars which have been returned to the Fender factory for a customer-requested change of colour, although these are stamped as such on their return to the factory and were more often stripped back and refinished from bare wood since the customer was paying..
The nice thing about these types of finishes is not only their uniqueness (the originals are very rare and fetch huge amounts of money when they do exchange hands now), but the fact that as the top finish wears down (either as the result of age/wear or from our stringent relicing process) to expose a completely contrasting colour beneath enhances their relic appeal.
We are able to offer our boutique vintage replacement guitar bodies with the same unique dual-finishes as these odd-ball Fender creations from the '50s and '60s, both in alder and in swamp ash and in your choice of colour for both the first and secondary finishes. The photographs above demonstrate a customer-ordered olympic white body with candy apple red underneath (which is in turn a three-step finish with metallic undercoat!) but anything is possible, drop us a line and tell us what you're after and we will be happy to discuss the options with you.
