Fender Stratocaster, Natural 298842 (1970)

Restoring orphaned vintage guitars has started to become quite the fun endeavor for us here at TME. It's not something that happens very often, but when the opportunity presents itself, it's a reminder of how fulfilling it can be to steward the bones of an old guitar back into the world with a new (and often times unique) lease on life.

This 1970 Fender Stratocaster came to us with a stripped original Alder body that was mercilessly hacked up for neck and bridge humbuckers, likely when the paint was sanded off. Despite the "handy" work, the stripping of the finish revealed a very nicely grained Alder body that also happens to be quite lightweight.

The neck, however, was left alone all this time. As the year would suggest, this is an excellent feeling Hendrix-era maple cap Strat neck, with the large headstock and still rocking its lone factory string tree. The original tuners were never swapped out for Schallers or Grovers (can you believe it?!), and the factory frets remained. We replaced the original worn frets with Jescar 47095 wire and it's feeling amazing!

We went for a less obvious approach on the electronics front. Given the routing, we felt we had some leeway to go in a different direction. Enter Gemini pickups. Rob wound us an excellent pair for this guitar, consisting of a Tone Ranger in the neck position (think Wide Range humbucker) and a Suprocaster in the bridge position (think lap steel pickup meets P90 meets tele). It's kind of like stuffing the guts of a hot rodded 70s Tele Custom into a Strat body. The harness is more vintage Strat leaning, with a single master volume and individual tone controls along with a 3-way switch. The top hat knob is a nice little nod to the tele-isms of this restoration, too.

Aged 3-ply white pickguards don't get better than this, custom made for us by the fine folks at Spitfire. This is our second aged white pickguard from them, and they absolutely nail the look of a vintage guard. It fits the vibe of this old Strat so well!

Miraculously, the original bridge survived without being tossed in favor of a Kahler or Floyd Rose. Even all of the saddles are still with it! We paired it with a repro arm, as the original had been lost to time. Two springs came with it, and we added a third to get proper tension and float going. The setup feels so good!

You've seen the likes of Laurent Brondel's New Vintage series, which is probably the closest thing to this guitar we could compare it to. Irreplaceable vintage wood and parts merge with modern touches to create a one-of-a-kind vintage electric. If they could all turn out as great as this one, we'd be doing a lot more of this!

Paired with a Fender ABS hardshell case.