New neck day!

p90fool

I built a partscaster last year, using a 2-piece American alder body, a couple of cans of Olympic white nitro, a Wudtone bridge, a fully-loaded AVRI scratchplate and a 2015 Classic 60s neck I bought barely used on this forum.

It was a kind of tribute to an old white '63 Strat I'd had years before, but I didn't really like the neck profile that much, and being of a certain age had always had a soft spot for the CBS big headstock look, even if the rest of those guitars was sometimes crap.

As a teenager I used to frequent a tiny little music shop to buy strings and one day in the summer of 1982 a brand new Strat neck appeared on the wall among the learner acoustics, school violins and Westone electrics.

According to Jean who ran the place it was a cancelled customer order (a local guitar teacher who'd died in a car crash I believe), and CBS Fender had refused to take it back, so it sat on the wall with a £120 price tag for a couple of years until the shop went bust.

It never sold, so the shop owner's son took it home and mounted it on a test guitar for his electronic projects. He's not really a player, only taking up lessons a few weeks ago and has other guitars anyway, so the neck is basically as new, apart from a little yellowing and being drilled for 4-hole mounting.

So today, after 35 years of hankering after it we did a swap (plus some cash his way, hey we are friends after all) and I now have a perfect-condition, zero-fret wear CBS-era Stratocaster neck.

Now I know a lot of (if not most) people would probably prefer the before pic with the early 60s-style neck and rosewood board, but my obsession with Strats started as a kid during the CBS era and I've always just had an irrational love of the look, so I'm a happy boy today.


http://i67.tinypic.com/fkbot1.jpg

http://i64.tinypic.com/29uvc6g.jpg

http://i64.tinypic.com/wqoa4k.jpg

Ravenous

Call it "The Time Machine".

Bit of a Bargain I think...

victorludorum

Break out the Univibe!

DrBob

No, in this instance you have definitely made the right move !

ICBM

I prefer it with the maple neck and big headstock too!

Sassafras

I don't like the big pegheads and bullet truss rods.
Brings back bad, painful memories of an absolutely awful Strat I had in the 70s.
The day I swapped it for an early Gordon Smith was one of the happiest days of my life.

ICBM

It's undoubtedly true that a lot of 70s Strats, especially towards the end of the decade, were dreadful guitars.