An Exceptionally Fine Pre-CBS Lake Placid Blue Stratocaster

1965 Fender Stratocaster.

This near mint pre-CBS 'L Series' custom-color Lake Placid Blue Metallic Stratocaster weighs just 7.50 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-to-thick maple neck. Brazilian rosewood fretboard with 21 original small frets and pearloid dot position markers. Small headstock with decal with "Fender" ''Transition' logo (fall 1964-1965) in gold with black trim, "Stratocaster" in black beside it, and "With Synchronized Tremolo" and four patent numbers in black below. Single "butterfly" string tree with 'large' metal spacer. Individual "double-line" Kluson Deluxe tuners with oval metal buttons stamped on the underside "D-169400 / Patent No". The neck is dated "2 NOV 64B." Four-bolt neck plate with the serial number "L56419" between the top two screws. Three light-gray bottom white plastic-covered single-coil pickups with staggered polepieces and outputs of 6.30k, 6.01k, and 6.06k. The pickups are all dated in black marker "2-12-65". 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. White plastic knobs with green lettering. Jack socket in body face. The potentiometers are all stamped "137 6501" (CTS January 1965). Fender "Synchronized Tremolo" combined bridge/tailpiece. Complete with the original tremolo arm and bridge cover. The Lake Placid Blue Metallic finish is fresh and bright and totally unfaded. The original frets show a small amount of wear on the first three frets and there are no 'divots' in the fretboard. This fifty-two year old, 100% original custom-color Stratocaster is in exceptionally fine (9.00) condition, with just some very fine finish checking on the top and back, a couple of small (less than a match-head) surface chips on the top, a few very small surface chips on the back (the largest the size of two match-heads), a few edge marks and a tiny amount of varnish wear on the back of the neck. Certainly one of the cleanest pre-CBS Lake Placid Blue Stratocasters that we have ever seen. Complete with the original tremolo arm, chrome bridge cover. Housed in it's original Fender black hardshell case with black leather ends and dark orange plush lining (8.75).

This actual guitar appears in Werner's List (1998) as  "L56419  Nov 64  Strat  LPB". However we know from the dates on the potentiometers and the pickups that this guitar left the factory sometime in February 1965.

Fender introduced the Lake Placid Blue finish in 1960. "Du Pont was the biggest supplier of paint to the car factories, most notably those of General Motors. Fender used paints from Du Pont's Duco nitro-cellulose lines, such as Fiesta Red or Foam Green, as well as the more color-retentive Lucite acrylics like Lake Placid Blue Metallic or Burgundy Mist Metallic. As Custom Color researcher Clay Harrell has established, these names given to the colors came from the original car makers' terms: Fiesta Red, for example, was first used by Ford in 1956 for a Thunderbird color, while Lake Placid Blue originally appeared on a 1958 Cadillac Brougham." (Tony Bacon and Paul Day, The Fender Book, p. 30).