Another "Blackie"… Just Like Eric's

This 'composite' mid '57 Stratocaster weighs exactly 8.00 lbs. and has a solid alder body, contoured on back and lower bass bout. One-piece fretted maple neck with 21 frets and black dot position markers and a scale length of 25 1/2 inches. The neck has a wonderful deep "V" neck profile and a really wide nut width of 1 11/16 inches. This guitar has been expertly re-finished by master luthier Scott Lentz who also re-fretted the neck (with original spec fretwire) and re-decal'd the headstock. Small headstock with decal with Fender "spaghetti" logo in gold with black trim, "STRATOCASTER" in black beside it, "WITH SYNCHRONIZED TREMOLO" in black below it, and "ORIGINAL Contour Body" at the ball end of the headstock. Individual 'no-name' Kluson Deluxe tuners with oval metal buttons (stamped inside: "2356766 / PATENT APPLD"). Single butterfly string tree. Four-bolt neck plate with the serial number ("--23586") between the bottom two screws. Three white plastic-covered black-bottom single-coil pickups with staggered pole pieces and nice, hot outputs of 5.91k, 6.11k, and 6.44k. Single-layer white plastic pick guard with eight screws. Three controls (one volume, two tone) plus three-way selector switch, all on pick guard. White plastic knobs with gold lettering. Fender "Synchronized Tremolo" combined bridge/tailpiece (six-pivot bridge/vibrato unit with through-body stringing). The neck has a pencil mark of "7-57" and the tremolo cavity has a pencil mark of "8/55". The potentiometers were replaced in the mid-sixties and are stamped "137 6618" and "137 6624" (CTS June and July 1966). Otherwise all of the electrics and hardware are original to the guitar. Housed in a modern TKL black hardshell case with black plush lining (9.50).

This guitar started out as a two-tone sunburst and In the mid-sixties, the original owner had the guitar re-finished in a ghastly gold flake metallic (to match one of his cars). That is when the pots were changed. When Scott Lentz removed the ghastly gold finish he found a body date of August 1955. The neck is dated July 1957 so there has definitely been a 'marriage' at some time. Whatever the story, in summary we have here a mid-fifties Stratocaster re-finished in black (to factory spec) and fitted with mid-sixties potentiometers. Eric Clapton's famous "Blackie" (serial # -20036) was also a composite guitar with a body from circa 1956 and a "pronounced 'V' shape neck". The serial numbers of both Clapton's guitar and ours are from early-to-mid 1957. Clapton's guitar had also been re-finished in black…

Eric's guitar was sold at Christie's New York in June 2004 for $959,500… and the purchaser (Guitar Center) had the Fender Custom Shop make 275 replica's of which only 185 were for sale in the US. All of these guitars sold in a very short space of time. Our guitar is NOT a replica - it is just about what Eric started with when he first acquired 'Blackie'. The description of lot 88 in the Christie's New York auction reads "FENDER. "Blackie" circa 1956 and 1957, a composite Fender Stratocaster. The headstock bearing the logo Fender/STRATOCASTER/with synchronized/tremolo/original/contour/body, neckplate engraved -20036, the body of alder in later black finish fitted with three single-coil pickups, 21 fret maple neck of pronounced 'V' shape with black dot inlays and single string clip…"

"The Stratocaster was launched during 1954 [and was priced at $249.50, or $229.50 without vibrato]...The new Fender guitar was the first solid body electric with three pickups [Gibson's electric-acoustic ES-5, introduced five years earlier, had been the overall first], meaning a range of fresh tones, and featured a new-design vibrato unit that provided pitch-bending and shimmering chordal effects. The new vibrato -- erroneously called a 'tremolo' by Fender and many others since -- was troublesome in development. But the result was the first self-contained vibrato unit: an adjustable bridge, a tailpiece, and a vibrato system, all in one. It wasn't a simple mechanism for the time, but a reasonably effective one...Fender's new vibrato had six bridge-pieces, one for each string, adjustable for height and length, which meant that the feel of the strings could be personalized and the guitar made more in tune with itself...The Strat came with a radically sleek, solid body, based on the outline of the 1951 Fender Precision Bass. Some musicians had complained to Fender that the sharp edge of the Telecaster's body was uncomfortable... so the Strat's body was contoured for the player's comfort. Also, it was finished in a yellow-to-black sunburst finish. Even the jack socket mounting was new, recessed in a stylish plate on the body face... the Fender Stratocaster looked like no other guitar around especially the flowing, sensual curves of that beautifully proportioned, timeless body. The Strat's new-style pick guard complemented the lines perfectly, and the overall impression was of a guitar where all the components ideally suited one another. The Stratocaster has since become the most popular, the most copied, the most desired, and very probably the most played solid electric guitar ever" (Tony Bacon, 50 Years of Fender, p. 18).