Early Re-Finished 1963 "L" Series Daphne Blue Stratocaster

This pre-CBS 'L Series' custom-color Stratocaster weighs just 7.70 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 medium-profile maple neck with a wonderful swirly Brazilian rosewood fretboard with 21 frets and clay dot position markers. Small headstock with decal with "Fender" 'Spaghetti' 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 6.82k, 7.12k, and 6.45k. Original rare "Tortoiseshell over 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 6309" (Stackpole March 1963). White plastic knobs with green lettering. Jack socket in body face. Fender "Synchronized Tremolo" combined bridge/tailpiece. Complete with the original tremolo arm.

This forty-seven year old Stratocaster was refinished most probably in the late sixties or the early seventies in the rare Fender custom color "Daphne Blue." All of the parts down the very last screw are original. The neck has that wonderful early sixties medium profile with a generous nut width of just under 1 11/16 inches. The original frets show very little wear and this beautiful guitar is a pleasure to play, hear, and even just look at! It is in exceptionally fine (9.00) condition, and has all of the good points as well as that great feel of a pre-CBS Stratocaster. Housed in the extremely rare original Fender top-of-the-line brown leather hardshell molded form-fit case with orange plush lining (9.00).

There was available starting in the late 1950s to the early 1960s a brown molded form-fit case. This was a very rare, upper line case with a hard brown molded exterior with a golden brown interior. This case was basically a rectangle, but with very rounded corners. This case looks similar to the black molded Fender cases of the 1980s, except this case is brown, thicker, a little shorter in length, and the interior is not blue.