Fender Stratocaster (1954)

From the listing

Seller's description

It's interesting to think that after almost 60 years in business, our shop is still experiencing "firsts" with vintage inventory. Moments like this continue to have significant impact on us as musicians and guitar fanatics, and it's what truly excites us to come into work every day and do what we do. This 1954 Fender Stratocaster is the first first-year example of the legendary solidbody electric we've welcomed into our space...ever! It's a special piece of Fender history, and it's just cool to hold something that, even in its infancy, shows just how progressive and also well-designed an instrument it was. Although the Stratocaster continued to evolve through the 50s and into the 60s with tremendous impact, we can't help but look back to this guitar and its origin story. This is a late Spring / early Summer build judging by some of the rarer transitional features, such as the short skirt polystyrene knobs, 100k potentiometers, and lack of worm route in the bridge pickup cavity. The original Ash body features a beautiful Sunburst finish along with clear nail holes under the pickguard, as well as a pencil date in the tremolo cavity of '5/54' and a masking tape date in the control cavity of '6/11/54', signed by Mary. The neck was completed by Tadeo Gomez and initialed on the heel along with a date of '6-54', which is concurrent with the body date. The original single coil pickups are connected to an almost entirely original wiring harness. When we first acquired the guitar, the volume pot had been replaced by an old Centralab potentiometer that dated from early 1959. It was a 500k audio taper pot as well. Not a great fit for this Strat! However, the two tone pots showed original Stackpole 100k linear potentiometers dated from the 41st week of 1953. We were fortunate to source a proper 100k pot to restore the harness to its original spec. The original tone cap had also been replaced many years ago with a ceramic disk cap, which we elected to leave in place. The pickups