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Old 04-14-2011, 11:54 AM   #1
rockace521
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Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Waco, TX
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MIJ Strat in blue

Pokin around a local pawn shop here a few days ago I noticed a metallic blue strat with "Made in Japan" beneath the STRATOCASTER label on the front of the head stock. There was also this funky clunky metal box below the nut, which wasn't especially gorgeous.

I'd seen online that people were pretty impressed with the Japanese Strats, and that night I did more research. The only ones I could find to match the nut clamp were bearers of the System I tremolo made by Schaller and Kahler. More research showed that for some years after CBS decided to divest itself of a fading Fender line, no Fender guitars were manufactured in the USA whatsoever. What! Also, the guitars being manufactured and Fugigen Gekki (or some such) were superior to most of the US-produced Fenders of the late 70's, and actually rival currently produced US Fenders with the possible exception of Custom Shop builds. Hey now!

More research showed that "Made in Japan" was more desirable than "Crafted in Japan" (which came a bit later). Also that the Japan Strats with the Fender logo and not Squier were made of better materials, as they were for export. As I understand it, during this period the only new Fender Strats you could get were made in Japan--they became "Fender" during that period, until the Corona factory got up and running.

Also, several serial numbers came up time after time as being more desirable for one reason or another, with "JV" being the holy grail, "SQ" being also good, and "E" being the next in line as among the highly desirable.

Went back the next day and it was indeed an "E" series, so I haggled what I could and after they agreed to "take care of the taxes" I got it out the door at $399, which isn't a super-fantastic steal, but definitely within the range of what's considered the going price.

More research at home and it was conclusively ID'd as a Contemporary Standard 22 (for having 22 frets). Alnico single coils, basswood, maple neck w/skunk stripe (beauty), and that system one trem with rollers on the bridge, very strange but unique. Fender logo stamped on the bridge, and all the metal has that nice vintage look--old but very lightly oxidized in some few places.

All anyone can figure is it was manufactured between 84 and 87, as they didn't scrupulously observe serial number sequencing with the E-series. Also very cool is the color, which I can't definitively identify. According to the web experts, it could either be Ocean Turquoise or aged Lake Placid Blue. Seen pictures of them that are ID'd as LPB which look identical to this one, as the yellow component of the paint has the tendency to...yellow more with age, and a greenish cast is supposedly common as a result.

Has a 12" neck with kind of a shallow D profile, super playable, and the pickups are smokin hot. People have said they capture the vintage pre-CBS 60's strat vibe much better than anything to come out since, and when I plugged it in the first time it was miiiiiighty quacky and sounded vastly different than the new-tech N3 noiseless pickups on the other strat.

Anyway, it's pretty cool if not being a "holy grail" type of find. Since it harkens back to the 60's vibe, I can plug it into my Blues Junior (version II plain tolex), crank the reverb, and to to the beach with Dick Dale! Or slap the Crybaby on it and make lame attempts to mimic Jimi. Very cool.

Here's the best web representation of it I could find, it's identical in color and configuration (same guitar, only his is in better shape). Mine's a bit more "relic-ed," which is also fine.














Identical color and everything to mine, but it didn't come with the tremolo bar or the hex bolts in the nut clamp, so I just use the regular Fender Japan tuners, no biggie. I could replace it with a new Kahler clamp but I don't need it. Holds tune okay so far, and it's fully as easy to play as my 2011 ridiculously-low-action compound radius soft-vee neck.
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Last edited by rockace521; 04-14-2011 at 12:00 PM.
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