A Fine "Export" 1963 Fiesta Red Fender Stratocaster with "All Gold" Hardware

This 12 3/4-inch-wide guitar weighs 8.20 lbs. and has a nice, fat nut width of just under 1 11/16 inches and a scale length of 25 1/2 inches. Solid alder body, contoured on back and lower bass bout, one-piece maple neck, and veneer rosewood fretboard with 21 frets and black dot position markers. Small headstock with decal with "Fender" logo in gold with black trim, "Stratocaster" in black beside it, and "With Synchronized Tremolo" and three patent numbers in black below. Single "butterfly" string tree with metal spacer. Individual "single-line" Kluson Deluxe tuners with oval metal buttons. The neck is dated "2 OCT 63B." Three black-bottom white plastic-covered single-coil pickups with staggered polepieces and outputs of 6.17k, 5.50k, and 5.50k. Three-layer "minty" (white/black/white) plastic pickguard with eleven screws. Three controls (one volume, two tone) plus three-way selector switch, all on pickguard. The pots are dated "304 63 15" (Stackpole April 1963). White plastic knobs with green lettering. Jack socket in body face. Fender "Synchronized Tremolo" combined bridge/tailpiece. All of the hardware is gold plated even including the truss-rod adjustment screw. Complete with the original tremolo arm and bridge cover. This guitar is in exceptionally fine (9.00) condition, with the usual 'export' vertical checking and virtually no neck or fret wear. On the white plastic tremolo cover on the back of the guitar, one of the corners (approximately 3/8 inch) at the bottom has broken away where the screw was probably over tightened and there is also a crack in the centre of the cover. An excellent example of this rare classic color, and a wonderful player. Housed in its original Selmer 'Aligator' hardshell case with blue plush lining (9.00).

This is an original "Export" guitar for the UK market. The original Selmer factory "Fiesta Red" finish is over "Sunburst," as was very often the case in the early to mid sixties, due to the huge demand for this custom color. The ‘nail holes’ under the pick guard are clearly visible, but painted.

The English "Salmon Pink" Story and Nail Holes and Sunbursts.

"In the early 1960s, due to the popularity of Hank Marvin of the band the Shadows, the Stratocaster was THE guitar to own in the United Kingdom. In 1961, Fender was imported by Jennings (the makers of Vox amps), and in 1962 Fender was also imported by Selmer. Both Jennings and Selmer gave way to Arbiters as the sole UK distributor in the Summer of 1965 (perhaps because Fender didn't like having their products distributed by successful UK amp makers). But all the importers seemed to have brought Fender guitars into the UK *without* cases, probably because local cases were available for less money than the Tolex Fender cases (the Canadian Fender importers did the same thing). This in turn increased the possibility of damaged finishes as the guitar were imported into England, which helps lend itself to the following story.

Urban legand has it that English guitar shops found it easier to sell guitars that looked like Hank Marvin's Fiesta Red Stratocaster, than the standard sunburst finished Strat. Therefore, a lot of Fender Strats were rumored to be refinished from Sunburst to red on arrival in the UK to match Hank Marvin's guitar. The resulting color used by the Fender UK importers was not as red as Fender's factory "Fiesta Red", and was more of a "Salmon Pink" color. This of course added more to the confusion about what exactly Fiesta Red was, and the Salmon Pink color rumor.

Most of the red UK painted Strats where done right over the original sunburst. Also the UK painters did not seem to use the "nail hole" method of painting these guitars (lucky for us). Hence these 1960s refinished-when-new UK Strats will usually have painted nail holes, red-over-sunbuarst, and non-Tolex/weird cases. Therefore they are pretty easy to identify.

So is this "English refinished Fiesta Red" story rumor or fact? I personally tend to believe the story, as I received an email from an english gentlemen that claimed he worked for Selmer in the UK, and he in fact did some of the refinish work. I also owned a red-over-sunburst 1961 Strat in a Selmer case. But that's the only real proof I have that the story is true. Otherwise the jury is still out on this. But if the story is true, regardless, these English-refinished-red Strats are *not* factory original Fiesta Red guitars, and hence must be considered a "refin". Now if the nail holes are clear and present, I would consider it "original". But if there's no nail holes (or painted nail holes), by definition it's refinished and not original." (http://www.provide.net/~cfh/fenderc.html).