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

s56strat · May 14, 2018

Wow. I feel almost related. I bought my black maple neck strat new in 87.
Serial No. E348515. Within a hundred anyway.

I have many stratocasters but this E3 has been through everything with me. Start to current. Easily the lightest strat I ever picked up anywhere. I have been searching for one this light for a long time ever since..... unsuccessfully. Not really an issue but this E3 is so feather light, it's just not common at all.

I always wondered why it had a E3 serial number, but everything said 87 as far as the tags. Never researched it. Cool to know now. Great sound. The maple neck is something that I cannot explain. I always felt it had extra mojo and spank compared to my others excluding my CS nos56. They both are very comparable for me. My 2 best.

dc

circles · May 15, 2018

"Sir, we can beam it directly aboard."

"Make it so."

Ruscio · May 15, 2018

joeybsyc said: ↑

I haven't bought any guitars in awhile, in fact, I've been selling a few... but when I stumbled on this one being offered for sale I knew I had to have it! I love Fender history, and am particularly fond of the early American Standards, and how they more or less brought Fender USA back from the dead in the late 80's. I've read numerous stories about how the earliest guitars were built by a skeleton crew of a few skilled Fender employees who would later go on to become master builders in the soon to be developed "Custom Shop". Supposedly only a handful of guitars were put out per day during those early times, and were mostly hand assembled. I don't know how much of that is fact vs. folklore, but it's intriguing to me just the same!

The guitar pictured below is the earliest E3 serial I have ever seen offered for sale. It has all it's original paperwork, right down to the original store receipt from early 1987! The hang tag inspection card says it was tested and shipped in January of '87, about the same time Fender debuted the American Standard Strats at the NAMM show that same month. I haven't taken it apart, but can almost guarantee it has 1986 dates inside, as it was built, shipped to a dealer, and in the customer's hands by March of that year. These guitars have many features that separate them from later Am Std strats, including a fully glossy neck and headstock, bridge screws that fasten directly into the body wood with no brass inserts, a chrome plated tremolo block, and Fullerton body contours.

As an ironic twist, I was doing some research on these guitars and some of their unique features.... in reading an old thread on another gear site, I located the original owner, who owned it from 1987 until just a few years ago. I have spoken at length with him, and he told me of how he saw an ad in a Guitar Player magazine talking about the new American Standard line that was to debut at the beginning of the year. he went to his local music store and was there for the first shipment of them... a white one, a black one, and this one... a Torino Red lightweight, with a dark rosewood fretboard. They charged him extra for the case, and his grand total with tax in 1987 was $525.00 out the door.

While he said he did use the guitar for some studio work and played it in a band a few times, it remains in flawless original condition to this day. I feel very fortunate to be able to add this one to my collection, as it will join another early E3 serial Strat that is just a few hundred numbers after this one.

In any case, here are some pics! Hope you enjoy.

Click to expand...

What a remarkable find! Enjoy!

omni43 · May 15, 2018

If you ever want to sell it let me know.

Yaralag · May 15, 2018

We should ask him if he still owns it. This thread was started in 2013!

Strat-Slinger · May 15, 2018

Yaralag said: ↑

We should ask him if he still owns it. This thread was started in 2013!
Click to expand...

I noticed that too lol... but, I wouldn't have known about the OP's website if this thread wasn't resurrected.. he has some super cool fiddles from his collection posted there... sometimes zombie threads yield good things

Chief101 · May 15, 2018

And this may have been one of the last American Standards made. The shop I ordered it from (in late September 2016) was told this was “the last” 3TSB Shawbucker Strat shipped out of the Fender warehouse. It was ordered and shipped after the Am. Pros were being shipped to market.

Count Glockula® · May 16, 2018

Love my '89 Am Std. The neck is the best, with a low string profile...I fly through this:

Strat by Count Glockula® posted Sep 18, 2017 at 7:39 AM

4ndymoz · Jan 20, 2020

joeybsyc said: ↑

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/str...ar-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!

Click to expand...

Great Info on this thread. Here’s my E4 1987

vladimir · Apr 8, 2021 at 3:26 PM

Love my Strat♥️helloooo from Slovakia

Wrighty · Apr 9, 2021 at 10:40 AM

joeybsyc said: ↑

I haven't bought any guitars in awhile, in fact, I've been selling a few... but when I stumbled on this one being offered for sale I knew I had to have it! I love Fender history, and am particularly fond of the early American Standards, and how they more or less brought Fender USA back from the dead in the late 80's. I've read numerous stories about how the earliest guitars were built by a skeleton crew of a few skilled Fender employees who would later go on to become master builders in the soon to be developed "Custom Shop". Supposedly only a handful of guitars were put out per day during those early times, and were mostly hand assembled. I don't know how much of that is fact vs. folklore, but it's intriguing to me just the same!

The guitar pictured below is the earliest E3 serial I have ever seen offered for sale. It has all it's original paperwork, right down to the original store receipt from early 1987! The hang tag inspection card says it was tested and shipped in January of '87, about the same time Fender debuted the American Standard Strats at the NAMM show that same month. I haven't taken it apart, but can almost guarantee it has 1986 dates inside, as it was built, shipped to a dealer, and in the customer's hands by March of that year. These guitars have many features that separate them from later Am Std strats, including a fully glossy neck and headstock, bridge screws that fasten directly into the body wood with no brass inserts, a chrome plated tremolo block, and Fullerton body contours.

As an ironic twist, I was doing some research on these guitars and some of their unique features.... in reading an old thread on another gear site, I located the original owner, who owned it from 1987 until just a few years ago. I have spoken at length with him, and he told me of how he saw an ad in a Guitar Player magazine talking about the new American Standard line that was to debut at the beginning of the year. he went to his local music store and was there for the first shipment of them... a white one, a black one, and this one... a Torino Red lightweight, with a dark rosewood fretboard. They charged him extra for the case, and his grand total with tax in 1987 was $525.00 out the door.

While he said he did use the guitar for some studio work and played it in a band a few times, it remains in flawless original condition to this day. I feel very fortunate to be able to add this one to my collection, as it will join another early E3 serial Strat that is just a few hundred numbers after this one.

In any case, here are some pics! Hope you enjoy.

Click to expand...

Deleted, just noticed the original posting date! Still live that Strat though.

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