Good condition, 6/10, Made in Fullerton, California, USA, including original brown hardcase and the original tremolo arm and an era correct leather strap (no Fender or other recognizeble markings on the metal parts unfortunately, otherwise these can be very expensive as an accessory) plus original bridge cover in the case pocket.

Here is a guitar with a ton of stories so if you are looking for a nice clean vintage guitar you can keep scrolling, but if you are interested in a player vintage Strat at a good price and with all the most desirable features from 1962 this may be the one! Let's go through this one step by step:

All original plastic parts, slab rosewood fingerboard with clay dots (almost white because they have been protected by a layer of finish for a long time), the body has been refinished in a kind of Dakota Red and this was done before the man who owned the guitar passed away in the mid 1980´s (the guitar comes from the children of the widow after storing the guitar unplayed for almost 40 years) so a really old refin. We find traces of a different hue of red (more Fiesta Red) and we also find traces of black in some dents in the neck pocket and of course the white/grey undercoat (Fullerplast), so one possible explanation could be that this is one of the oversprayed Fiesta Red over Sunburst guitars from the Shadows era, commonly done by Selmer in the UK but also done by Fender in the States, but this is just a theory and can´t really be confirmed without removing the entire finish and starting over which we are not about to do.

The curves and contours have become a bit rounded by sanding before the refin so perhaps there is nothing of interest underneath the top layer. The neck has undergone even more abuse and now has 3 filled holes straight through the headstock from removed extra tuners (so someone made this into a 9-string? OMG!), and the entire neck has since been oversprayed with a clearcoat nitro finish so even the fingerboard has been covered and since the fibreboard Clay Dots originally where much whiter than what we usually see (brown/grey because of dirt and sweat) they look a bit odd but are clearly original to the guitar.

It has been refretted in the past and the new frets have very little wear and the nut has been shimmed to allow for the higher action after the refret.

More facts:

The neck stamp is 2OCT62B, the 3-way switch has been rebuilt with a new 5-way center wheel and bolted on (cool idea even if it means the original parts are altered), the 3 original pots have some visible dates including 3046242 (42nd week of 1962) and 304-6218 (18th week of 1962), the cavities have been painted with gold shielding paint and it seems like the gold paint has been covered underneath the pickguard with some brush strokes of more red paint, non original plastic cables in the electronics, all good and original routings, untouched solder joints on the pickups except for the neck pickup which was dead when it came to us and we had to have it rewound by pickup guru Johan Lundgren (lundgren.se) with vintage original specs, the output jack has been replaced (marked Japan).