NGD! One of the first American Standard Strats ever made!

After seeing this thread brought back from the dead this morning, it re-sparked my interest in researching these early guitars some more, especially this one, as it's my earliest American Standard strat, and the lowest serial number I've personally ever seen. Although I've had it for a couple years, I've admittedly never taken it apart. Today curiosity got the best of me and I decided to look into it farther. I unbolted the neck for what I firmly believe was the first time since it was originally assembled in Corona California in 1986. Yes, 1986. While the American Standard wasn't officially shown to the public until late January 1987 at the NAMM show, this one has a neck date of 12-2-86. I've seen one other December 86 dated American Standard neck, but it was several weeks after this one. This is definitely the earliest American Standard neck date I've ever seen, and probably one of the very first production guitars made. There is no paper sticker on the back of the heel as commonly found on US made Fenders of this era, and some odd markings in the neck pocket itself. Looks like a series of letters with "127" underneath. I'm not sure exactly what the marks mean, if they were just inspection marks or something else... but here are a few pics. Sorry for the poor quality, but the date and markings should be pretty clear.





Inside the trem cavity I also found an ink stamped inspectors mark hidden by the center trem spring. When removed you can clearly see a stamp that reads J. ANDRADE. It appears it was stamped after paint was applied by prior to clearcoat. This caused me to do some more digging, and I discovered this name and stamp turn up on other mid-late 80's USA strats, including a 57 AVRI Mary Kaye someone posted here 4 years ago. I also found a post where someone else had a similar marking on their 1987 Strat, and someone replied:

"J ANDRADE is Jesus Andrade. He was a painter years ago. He is now the Custom shop lead. He has worked at Fender for 35+ years. Guitars had and still do have painters names or initials stamped or stickered in them for accountability in case too many errors were found they knew who did it."

Upon further investigation, Jesus Andrade is indeed the current Group Lead for Fender and Jackson guitars, and presently runs the paint department at the Fender Custom Shop. He has been employed by Fender since 1979. Here's his LinkedIn profile:

https://www.linkedin.com/pub/jesus-andrade/4b/184/8b3

Pretty neat stuff!

 

Ok, now it's getting even MORE interesting. As I mentioned a few posts above, since starting this thread a couple years ago, I have added several more 1987-89 American Standard strats to my collection. I originally described this as Torino Red, as that's the only red that was officially available on the 1987 American Standard Stratocaster. Well, a few months ago I located and purchased another 1987 American Standard in Torino Red, but this one has a maple neck, and an E4 serial. That guitar can be seen in this thread:
http://www.strat-talk.com/forum/stratocaster-discussion-forum/328487-cherry-first-year-e4-american-standard-strat-case-queen.html

The interesting part came when, for the first time since owning them... I placed my Torino Red/maple neck '87 strat directly beside my Torino Red/rosewood '86 and discovered that the colors are VERY different. So different in fact, I am suspecting that this early production (December 1986) Red strat might not actually be Torino Red at all... And may be Fiesta Red as used on the AVRI strats that would have already been being built alongside this very early production model American Standard. If you look at the pics below you can see the color is considerably more bright and "orangey" on this one than on the maple neck version built just a short time later. I have seen slight color variations from batch to batch of a specific color, and that may be the case here, but the more I compare these 2 reds the more I believe they are 2 completely different colors. I've also been studying 1986 Fiesta Red AVRI Strats, and must admit some of the photos I've found look just about identical to the color on my early production E3 American Standard. Again I apologize for these utterly terrible cell phone photos, but check this out!

 

Ha... Joey still exists, although I don't frequent these forums much anymore. I got an e mail notification that someone responded to this old thread so I brought it up...

To answer The above question, My E4 Torino Red/maple does indeed have the earlier "Fullerton Curves".... and you may also be correct about there being a year difference between the 2. I still have never seen another Torino Red as bright and bold as my E3 one though, and believe it may in fact be painted what was called Fiesta Red at the time (late 1986).