1975 Fender Strat Disassembly - Mojo is Real

foreign [Music] so I bought a 1975 vintage vendor strap with the original hard shell case you can pick up these 70 strats pretty inexpensively relatively inexpensively for vintage piece of gear and then on top of that you add mods that previous owners have added and that drops the price even more so I got this for a great price let's take a look [Music] oh yes this thing has got some serious Mojo that's why I picked this one up you know there's certainly other options out there when you're picking in the Vintage instrument some are in like Immaculate condition and those are just boring and some have been played and those are the ones that I'm attracted to this thing is dirty it's got some serious Mojo it's been modded and I'll go through those mods when we take a closer look from the tip of the headstock all the way to the bridge it does have the original F stamped period correct tuners they look really great and of course we have the three screw neck plate with the stamped serial number I just love this guitar so though the back of the neck is polyurethane the front face so the headstock is actually Nitro and the reason for this is that apparently there was some kind of issue with the fender logo sticker and polyurethane so Fender just used Nitro and it's very clear this is Nitro because it has that vintage patina that dark Amber Hue that you only get with age now the same aged patina can be found on the body too the body and the headstock are the same color although in the 70s Fender did move towards polyurethane bodies and polyester bodies this is also the era that Fender introduced the two string trees on the headstock you can also tell it's a 70 Strat from the bullet truss rod right there so total giveaway this is a 70 Strat this nut is really interesting I couldn't tell you if that's an original nut or not I've never seen one that color before it's like a very very off-white plastic you can see their immediate discoloration from the headstock to the board next to every fret marker there's a step so you can see the raw wood here and then a step to the poly same thing here lots of exposed wood and then exposed wood there and the amount of poly still left on the board is very thin so that step is super thin and then you have these really interesting striations here next to every fret and I don't know what that is it could be scratches but it's nearly on every fret probably just sloppy Tech work or sloppy luthier work now the other reason why I got this guitar so inexpensively was because the pickups aren't original everybody wants the original gray bottom bobbins from this era and that's one of the really cool things about the 70s guitars they had great bobbins and you had a stamp on each one of the pickups at the very bottom that you could date the guitar these aren't the original pickups and I'm okay with that so the 70 strats had three-way switches up until about I don't know 79. that's a five-way thank goodness because I don't know if I could live with a three-way switch so this is the original Jack and the original Jack Plate we have the original 70s Bridge one of the reasons why I liked this particular 75 was because of the amount of pieces a lot of the times these are going to be three four or five piece bodies and that's okay if you have an opaque collar but the transparent Ash when you see the different wood grains kind of clash it looks terrible right and this one had the least amount of clashing especially from this piece here so there's a seam here and you have grain on this piece and the grandest piece and it looks great it doesn't Clash too much these 70 strats were notorious for our sloppy neck joints and they also have the micro tilt system so you can see that there's definitely a gap there like the micro tilt system is being engaged and it's pushing the back of that neck up now there's a plate on the actual neck so you have metal to metal touching but I might reduce the micro tilt system and bring it down so I have wood touching wood and just adjust the Saddles the board is just beautiful the original strap buttons so they have that patina [Music] three bolt the neck plate the micro tilt you want to get one of these 70 strats where you have a stamp on there there's some that don't and that's okay but I wanted one like these and you can see there's been a an etching here that someone erased so at one point this was etched and then they kind of removed it I've seen old solder before and it doesn't look that shiny so this has probably been reflowed maybe even a couple of times that string claw and those screws are totally original and so is the bridge there's a stamp there with a number and I'm not sure what that number is I'll look into it later don't have the original back plate cover and that's perfectly okay because I remove them from all my strats oh where he's there see that third piece here where it protrudes from this lower horn and disappears once it goes and dips in then you see it again here all the poly in the back of the neck still there and even quite shiny and you have kind of the standard dents and dings at the edge of the back of the headstock cases in pretty good shape there's nothing in here I was hoping for some kind of case candy but there's nothing the Hang tags but I am happy I have the original hard shell case and this beautiful vintage orange interior so I've been playing this guitar and it sounds phenomenal I am totally in love with it there's certainly some Mojo and I know that Mojo is not a real thing but it's kind of a real thing and this guitar definitely has some Mojo maybe Mojo is just how the guitar makes you feel maybe it's how the guitar interacts with you the feedback it gives you sometimes certain guitarists fight back this is one of those type of guitars and it sounds just beautiful the other thing that I noticed after plugging it in is that the screw head for the Jack Plate actually went through the hole so we either need to find a larger screw head or figure out a way to keep the original screw in just keep it from coming off we're going to take off the neck take some photos date it take a look at the inside see if we see any stamps date those as well that's it I'm not going to clean this this thing is looking gorgeous so according to the Fender website and a few other sources this is the air that Fender actually started using polyester in the 1970s but it's also when they started using polyurethane somebody's actually had a polyurethane undercoat and Nitro on top so I suspect that this body is Nitro on top because the actual lacquer is coming off from the body I think it's pretty apparent that the headstock face and the body being the exact same color just means they use the same lacquer and the lacquer age the same way and you can see that the fretboard has got that pale poly and the sides of the headstock as well as the back of the neck are also poly so a pretty clear indication that this guitar probably has a Nitro lacquer on the body foreign [Music] this is interesting check this out I didn't see this with the strings on so it looks like strings or going down a little bit too much and there's notches here now these notches are either made by the strings touching the wood before they hit the tuners or these are notches that were made on Purpose By guitar tech or the previous owner this seems to be a little bit of a drop of super glue here so I'm wondering if these slots got so low through wear that someone did that little super glue trick to try to raise them up a little bit [Music] that's the third bolt There's an actual Bolt and here is the neck plate with the stamped number so it's clearly more yellow here or the natural Ash I think is what this color was called and then you can see with age it becomes a little bit more honey and Amber towards the back of the body all right let's take this neck off you know a lot of people say that these 70s necks had a lot of slop in the pocket I disagree I can't even take this neck off it's on there really tights dang all right so yeah no slop on the neck pocket here this is what we wanted to really look at we want to look at all the stamps all right so here we have the plate for the micro tilt system so somewhere around right here is where the grub screw for the micro tilt touches the neck plate so you have metal to metal and it can push this heel up so you can get the right angle or your strings and here's the bolt hole so this is the actual proper bolts it would go in here and it looks like it's just like a hollow hole and you got about a quarter of an inch of threads in there for this guy to actually seat in there which is really cool it just says w-e-b-r another letter which I can't distinguish and then GNT we have the Microtel system on the body there's that grub screw that's going to push the heel up here's the bolt hole where the bolt goes through and then we have two additional holes here which are very interesting these could be for the paint stick so there's a very faint inspection stamp same color as on the neck it's black and this one has the number 33 in the center could be a 53 but I think it's 33 and then there is another inspection stamp very similar to the black and puts in red and I can't read what's in the inside then you also have this signature here in Sharpie and a whole bunch of other kind of indicators and signatures that is an R that's a d that's an M this could say Pedro all right under magnification that's definitely a name it says p-e-d-r-o-m so it's Pedro M but it's really interesting artifact any way to find inside a neck pocket Pedro m M it's a whole bunch of writing in this pocket I can't make it out it's just a huge mess in there any type of cleaning solution I add just essentially runs the risk of removing these steps so I'm not going to run the risk of cleaning this this is pretty dirty there's a lot of leftover finish there's Grime there's dirt and I don't want to put any type of cleaning solution on here because it does run the risk of removing the stamps might blow it out with some candare this is the safe thing to do here you can see all that junk coming off that's all the cleaning I'm going to do to this so next thing we're going to do is figure out the Jack Plate problem we have it slipping through the screw head but let's fix this first this is an easy low-hanging fruit problem that we can knock out relatively quick screws nice and tight in there so still is grouping the wood this one is stripped so it just went right through the hole you can see just slips right through so this screw whether it's original or not is no good to me and I can't get it out just want one little grip it just one that's wide enough I found a flat head that I'm able to actually have some purchase in there with and I'm just grabbing a pair of pliers to grip this little screwdriver I'm pushing downward pressure and it's turning and little by little I'm getting this guy to turn and come out I have enough room here to grab them with pliers now if I want to the head was too small and I was going through the back plate holes so I'm gonna replace him see it just goes right through that hole okay so check this out this is another reason why I think that the body has Nitro the lacquer whatever it is is actually peeling off with a very minimal agitation it's just coming off and I don't think polyurethane does this now I'm not familiar with polyester which was another finish that they actually used in the 70s so this might be polyester I don't know but the fact that it's flaking off like this just suggests that it can't be polyurethane one it's peeling off on its own two it's the same Amber vintage color as the handstock and three there's checking on the back and I'm not really sure the polyurethane or polyester can check you know this was the era of the accountants when Leo Fender sold his company so maybe this is just a cheap lacquer an inexpensive way to cut Corners I don't know in any case it just takes minimal agitation to get this thing to come off that's the other thing with this finish I feel like if we do as some kind of cleaning solution it will also irritate it peel off more of it so we're just going to keep the Mojo we're not going to clean it we'll dust It Off whenever possible so we'll get the solder joint it is pretty sloppy the Jack itself looks like it's original looks old but that's definitely really sloppy I can't believe that would come from the factory does not look like the other white wire so this has been messed with for sure let's leave this loose for now all right we'll use a separate container for these pickguard screws all righty whoa okay gorgeous I mean obviously dirty but in that kind of like really cool archaeological gorgeous way there's green stuff growing in here like it's green like there is who knows what it is foreign okay look at that okay so this is pretty interesting because all the lacquer is just coming right off when I blow it with candare whatever this lacquer is whether it's Nitro or polyurethane or polyester who knows but it just comes right off now I've never seen anything like this I mean not even Nitro but I'm just gonna stop because I just did that for demonstration purposes to show you but it's incredible how cheap this lacquer was and it really begs the question of what was Fender doing in the 70s what is this stuff that it comes off so easily I've never known night show to do that and you can clearly see a difference between like the gloss and then the satin where the actual lacquer is actually coming off pretty incredible what is all this green stuff growing here I I don't want to know but I don't want it living in my guitar all right so since this is under the pickguard I think we will maybe clean it a little bit all right so these are lint-free four-ply aesthetic wipes they're meant for like nail salons and I use these on all my cleaning jobs but they're lint free and that's the key word you don't have to get these or anything like them but lint-free is what you're looking for that's what I use because I don't want to leave behind anything I don't want little strands of anything anywhere I'm using the Dunlop stuff only because it's accessible right you don't want something that you have to buy halfway across the world and wait for shipping get this on Amazon shipped to my door in two days and it works I've used this on pretty much every cleaning job so you can check out all my other vids but it's accessible accessibility something quick something easy and I want to waste time I want to work for something I just want to clean the guitar I mean what is that it's lime green [Music] heck is this stuff whenever this Dunlop cleaning solution is it does leave behind a little bit of suddiness like there's soap suds this was the best I can do without hurting the Finish [Music] everywhere that I was rubbing we had some of that finish coming off it was just flaking off everywhere I got most of the intense green color off that's gonna have to be good enough and we want to be as gentle as possible and this is as gentle as I can get on lip stuff doesn't have I mean they don't tell you what's in it but it it doesn't react with vintage finishes like alcohol does it's just a cleaner prep so I think it's just soap I think it's soapy water that's all it is all right so in the 70s Fender did not Shield the entire pick card like this it was basically just a small little sliver probably by the pots and these are not the original gray bobbins from the 70s these all have nearly the same date so it has the Fender Custom Shop sticker someone's initials a I or a y or a s then a date which is 1 2 11 so 2011. [Music] so the Curious Thing about the lacquer is that I'm not getting any of the peeling on the back there's some checking but the peelings occurring on the inside of the horns and on the front of the guitar but I'm not seeing that flaking of the lacquer on the back which is really curious now the neck is 100 polyurethane and it looks exactly the way you'd expect it to look fretboard does have a lot of it missing and peeling off so I can't explain it I mean maybe this is just human chemical reactions because I mean this is round over someone played this sucker and there's just no Poly on that entire Edge so there's finished checking on the back of the guitar and you can't really see it head on you have to kind of look at it at an angle and I can only get some photographs of it it's hard to shoot on the video but it's all over the back on the belly curve as you can see and I don't think that polyurethane checks like this maybe polyester does I don't know so I still don't know what this finish is on the body it's certainly doing different things on the back then on the front it's all a mystery let's put the neck back on so as I mentioned before this is a very tight neck pocket so I'm just going to go all the way to the very back I'm going to press down see if we can hear this that's tight screws [Music] I'm going to test my electronics one last time where the strings go on nothing scratchy we're good not much we need to do here the string trees are definitely old and Rusty we're going to keep them the headstock's nice tuners work and let's just put the strings on that way we can start setting it up I'm not gonna mess with the neck just looks too cool I don't know what's going on with this nut if it's original or not but it works I'm not going to mess with it we're going to leave it as is [Music] [Applause] thank you

Channel: Mark Gutierrez

Views: 25,419

Keywords: luthiery, guitar building, vintageguitar, vintagestrat

Id: -7hk0EPGi4Q

Length: 22min 58sec (1378 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 06 2023