This is a unique guitar, built between late 1965 (has a early F plate serial and December 65 dated pots) and completed in early 1966 with a “large headstock” neck, still featuring a beautiful dark Brazilian board.
When our customer and current owner got it from the original owner many years ago, he swore that the finish was the original one, since he got it at a local music store in the early 70s like that.
While his story is certainly right, what we found out is that, in our opinion, this guitar was sent back to Italian Fender Distributor, Casale Bauer, sometimes in late 60s, early 70s, to cover the usual finish wear and renovate the body color. Infact the yellowed original finish can be seen under the arm wear on the top. We’ve seen many of these guitars done by Bauer’s Luthiers, they would just touch up the wear spots and overspray the whole body with clear lacquer, and in our experience this is the case.
The guitar has been played a lot and has a recent, professionally done refret.
The cavities of the guitar remain unaltered and original, with still the “worm route hair” intact, and the heavy wear on the sides of the body (thanks to the original Italian case available at the time) shows the correct primer and yellow stain.
Aside from this old finish restoration, that was very common back in the day, and a different switch installed in the 80s (now the original is back in place) on the original white celluloid pickguard, the instrument remains original in all its parts and plays great.
This is a unique opportunity to get an impossibly cool “Ocean Turquoise” strat at a fraction of the price of a 100% original!
