Norman Finds And Opens One Of The Rarest Fender Stratocasters | 1954 | Serial:# 0269 | Refinished

okay guys so what we're going to do today is we're doing like a little study on this it's a 54 strat but there's a bunch of things that are not original about it we want to address each one of course this is a brown case which is an early 60s case it could be it could be a 59 to about 62. okay so right away we can see that it's an ash body so ash has this wood that kind of looks like oak a little bit it's got these grains in here and these lines we can tell that that's right got the strap round uh string retainer up top here but it's obviously a complete refinish and uh looking at the parts these look like the covers look like they're probably a little later that they're not bakelite same with the knobs here maybe this knob here could be one of the backline knobs i'm not sure but so what we're going to do is we're going to open it up we're going to take a look at it see where everything's at on this these are [Music] we'll have to check and see if these are the original tuners it's a very low number number 0269 but you can tell it's ash when you see these grains here the alder is much plainer so i'm going to have masa open this up we're going to take a quick look and see what we see under the guard okay so that's sticky and it go first this is extremely low number it's one of the lowest number of strats i've ever had and this is on consignment from an old friend of mine this would be a fantastic guitar to have a really great restoration done with a relic job and maybe a see-through blonde or something like that or a two-tone burst but more dark this is too light this sunburst okay [Music] now it doesn't look like there's a date in there anymore because they were written in pencil and if this thing was refinished and it was refinished quite a while ago and it looks like it's been refretted as well um what do you think on them and uh so sometimes on the refinish when they're sanding the guitar and prepping it they'll sand the date off of it uh but uh it's a it's also the neck is it looks like it could be almost like an a-neck yeah and i see it's a 54 here i see yeah over here we can zoom up i don't know if you can see that you can see that before that's right 54 548 there and the fret is slightly bigger than original flat but the slot here is not making it any too deep or anything it's narrow with the nut now or it looks like when they re finished the guitar they either sanded it down or it wasn't right and they have the edges a little bit louder so that data and you can see that the decal also is a repro decal um almost looks like it could be under the paint or something where it usually would be over the paint let's make sure crossroads oh it's pretty tight so this nut seems to be it's turning now yeah the one thing i realized that this knot here the slotted shoulder yeah shallower than the the later model the inside of it it's nothing messed so it is still good shape and then we're going to make sure the thruster of this works later on so the neck is this and maybe you we're going to take some new keys off yep so it does not say clues and deluxe or clues on the non moa yeah so that could be right does that does that seem like that looks good this is the original key you wanna take all off or i don't think we need to take them off let's take one more just for safekeeping there you go yeah yeah when they refined or oversprayed they didn't take the the bushing off so the new locker layer it actually goes over the it's almost cakey here where it's kind of built up right so that's something unusual yeah and this is a robot neck okay let's put the neck on the side all right did we let's see if we can measure the pickups and see if everything is uh measuring properly good morning we can do that sounds right so now um just so you know on these two pickups like when you go here this is volume and tone for this pickup in the middle and it's a three-way switch it's not a five-way volume and tone but back here it's a fixed treble so there is no tone control it's like flat out treble on 10 and you just have volume on that right okay so everything seems to be putting out okay we need to measure them but uh let's just look underneath and see what we got now a lot of the times on these bakelite parts parts they get very brittle over the years and a lot of times you go crack i sold the beautiful stratocaster a very early one that was all original to a friend of mine and he plays very hard he's a professional player and he's a very well-known guy i don't want to mention names but he plays very hard and after about a month he had cracked the pickup covers so there are some repro uh bakelite covers you can get and he we ordered some for him but they weren't the original and the guitar was hardly played but unfortunately after so many years the bakelite just gets really brittle oh it's a big screen from the jackpot too big of a screw there [Music] so again as of right now from first observation this is a player-grade guitar but this would be a fantastic guitar to do a first-rate restoration on and somebody wanted to do it in see-through blonde or in the two-tone burst this is even a bigger screw here so and also the angle of the other this one here is very strong it's supposed to be like this yeah yeah so let's open up the p card it's got the external out there is an extra out there it's too short i can't turn this over yeah the uh i guess when they took it out to refinish the guitar they probably cut the wires a little bit so it's a little too short now are the black back pickups cloth wiring the uh these are all three pickups mounted upside down so this is supposed to be this way yep now can you see the uh pot dates and all that says no dating on the cap i can see it that's a lot of dots on it my old eyes aren't uh able to read those things like i used to there's a number here but i can't identify the water here is it it says three zero four nine zero y i think it's a factory code it's not dating the tone cap is right but it seems to be this is maybe newer than 54 it's just in my opinion yeah and the switch look light but uh that this wire here the soldering it is absolutely not original so these things the pickups i don't know i can't identify the pickup you know it is a real 54 or not but uh the pickup cover is not original right so you know we can't say something for sure and also but there are black backs and they do like in their cloth wired so right i'd say it's a very good chance it does pick up something yeah i gotta be here with new yeah i gotta remove the the cover too but the color of the coil is you know looks like it is right so let's measure the the this resistance of pickups so it's just not very um [Music] so this is neck pickup looks like around five eight one that's in the range yeah i did where it should be right and middle pickup also 586 so that seems like that's good too and what did you pick up all around the same you know that's five six nine five eight something right so the only thing we would need to do is if we pop the covers off just look and see if it looks like the winding in there has been rewound or or anything if we see any detection but my assessment on this guitar is this would be a terrific guitar to restore and do a really great relic job and restoration on it um it's a very low number yeah before we do that let's see the uh the routing here yeah so because they mounted upside down they accommodated for the room of that here so you can see it's kind of fresh sanding or cutting there but they they put them in backwards yeah by some reason yeah well you know i mean judging by the quality of the finish that's on here this was not a great quality refinish so whoever did it probably didn't really know what they were doing and i know this is a really old refinish so um not by somebody who was really going for originality and knew what they were doing oh someone's beautiful yeah on the both side okay it's like a copper plate or something they put that instead maybe because they put them in backwards right no it's they should use the the lava tube for the christians this spring and the two copper plates that's just so you can raise and lower the pickups looks right to me and with the wax here the color of the coil is looks like defender original but the question is why is plastic well the reason that i say is that you know those big light covers break a lot so my guess is they probably started cracking and he probably put another set on there that that looks more uniform that would be a guess but you know when these guitars when they're this old you can only guess why somebody would do something um you know when they're restoring the guitar i don't think the way this guy refinished it he was restoring it he was just refinishing it difference between restoring and refinishing is restoring is trying to make the guitar look as close to being original as possible they didn't do any of them in this color they were generally a dark sunburst to a light in the middle so and you can see how crude the finish is it's not a very good finish on here so let's just put back together okay so i'm going to let you um you know just open these other two just so we can kind of assess oh you'll see the just in case we see one was rewound or one looks newer or anything you know it's just a good idea since we're in there too look at everything so we can kind of describe the guitar as it is and also um so whoever buys this guitar will know what they're getting but this is a really early early number extremely and this the hop upright and spring springs should be depressed by the rubber tube which if normal wants to do that so i can do it right away that's a little weird okay this is the center pickup there you go it's about same shape as neck pick up we saw it you come close to here okay so let's put this back together so it looks pretty consistent and i think this all three pickups came from the same guitar the same set from the factory you

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Keywords: guitar, guitarist, guitarists, electric guitar, music, Fender, fender, fender strat, fender stratocaster, 1954, original, 1954 strat, 1954 stratocaster, Fender Stratocaster, Fender Play, fenderplay, signature, premier guitar, trogly's guitar show, troglysguitarshow, Matthew Scott, timpierceguitar, Rick Beato, rhett shull, mary spender, Stratocaster, stratocaster, strat, Strat, Norman's Rare Guitars, normansrareguitars, Mark Agnesi, mark agnesi, Michael Lemmo, guitar of the day, Normans, Rare, EVH

Id: sVWIW4LmfzI

Length: 19min 22sec (1162 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 10 2021