An All Original Olympic White Mid 1960 'Slab' Board Stratocaster…

1960 Fender Stratocaster

This now rare custom color 'Olympic White' 12 3/4-inch-wide and 1 3/4 inch deep guitar weighs just 7.50 lbs. Solid alder body, contoured on back and lower bass bout. One-piece maple neck with a rosewood 'slab' fret-board, a nut width of just over 1 5/8 inches, a scale length of 25 1/2 inches and a really comfortable medium profile, gently rising from 0.83 behind the nut to 0.85 behind the 3rd, 0.88 behind the 5th; 0.92 behind the 7th, 0.95 behind the 9th and 0.98 behind the 12th fret. Twenty-one original small frets, and clay dot position markers. 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 single-line Kluson Deluxe tuners with oval metal buttons (stamped on the underside: "D-169400/Pat No."). Single "butterfly" string tree with 'small' metal spacer. Four-bolt neck plate with the serial number "52348" between the top two screws. Three 'black-bottom' pickups with outputs of 6.33k, 5.89k, and 5.55k. The pole-pieces are staggered as follows: (highest to lowest) D+G; low E+A; high E; and finally B. Three-layer celluloid "green" (white/black/white) pickguard with eleven screws and aluminum shield. Three controls (one volume, two tone) plus three-way selector switch, all on treble side of the pickguard. White ABS plastic knobs with gold lettering. Six-pivot bridge/vibrato unit with through-body stringing. The neck has a pencil mark of "5-60" and the neck pocket has the number "1" in a circle and "O White / 25 in black pencil". The potentiometers are all stamped "304 6034" (Stackpole, August 1960). There is some fine 'vertical' finish checking on the body, predominately on the top. There are a few 'scratch' marks, mainly on the back and edges of the body which have been 'touched-up' with matching paint. The original frets show very little sign of wear as does the Brazilian rosewood fretboard - this guitar has been played by a 'rhythm' guitarist who has not done any 'string bending'. Overall this totally original (aside from the small paint touch-ups) guitar is in exceptionally fine (9.00) condition. Complete with the original white ABS plastic tipped tremolo arm, nickel plated bridge cover, original black leather guitar strap and cord. Housed in the original Fender light brown tolex hardshell case with brown leather ends and orange plush lining (9.00).

"The Stratocaster was launched during 1954 [and was priced at $249.50, or $229.50 without vibrato]...The new Fender guitar was the first solidbody 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 Stratocaster's new-style pickguard complemented the lines perfectly, and the overall impression was of a guitar where all the components ideally suited one another. The Fender 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).