Fender Strat necks.......slab maple or fingerboard?

[nevermind]

Here is a question for you guys who really know vintage Fenders.

 

When did Fender start applying a seperate maple fingerboard to the neck and stop making them out of slabs? Or was it just the Tele's that had solid slab necks?

[mc5nrg]

Technically,its a "fretted maple neck" versus a separate maple board laminate on a maple neck...but whatever.First the 50s strats had fretted maple necks where the neck itself was fretted,in the early 60s they went to a rosewood neck where the board was a seperate thick slab of rosewood followed by a thin laminate rwd board and towards the mid to later 60s they brought back the maple fb in the form of a separate maple fingerboard rather than fretting the neck itself.I'm not certain offhand of the exact years.If you do a search for vintage guitars and come up with a site on provide.net IIRC you will find a pretty accurate history of Fender strats etc.

[snglcoil]

courtesy of http://www.provide.net/~cfh/fender.html#specs

 

Fingerboard Material:

 

* Maple fingerboard, 1950s: from the start in 1950, Fender used a one piece maple neck with a walnut "skunk" stripe down the back (except on early Esquires with no truss rod), where the truss rod was installed. This was the standard neck on all models until 1958 (when the Jazzmaster was introduced with a rosewood fingerboard; the rest of the Fender models changed to rosewood fingerboards in mid-1959).

 

* Rosewood fingerboard, "Slab" (Brazilian), 1958 to 1962: from mid-1959 (1958 for the Jazzmaster) till August 1962, Fender used a "slab" rosewood fingerboard. That is, the bottom of the fingerboard was flat and the board was fairly thick.

The Musicmaster family also used slab fingerboards (usually Indian rosewood) for about a year from Sept 1965 to Oct 1966. Slab fingerboards are also identifiable from the peghead by their "hump" line (humps toward the tuners), just above the nut.

 

* Rosewood fingerboard, "Veneer", 1962-1980: from August 1962 till 1980, Fender used a curved bottom rosewood fingerboard that was much thinner than the slab 'board. The veneer of rosewood got even thinner by mid 1963. Also by 1966 the rosewood changed from Brazilian to Indian rosewood. Veneer fingerboards are also identifiable from the peghead by their "dished" line (dishes toward the nut), just above the nut.

 

* Maple fingerboards, 1960-1968: available as special order. Different than the 1950s one-piece maple necks. These used an actual slab maple fingerboard glued to the maple neck, and no "skunk stripe" down the back of the neck for the truss rod.

 

* Maple fingerboards, 1969 and later: Fender's maple neck changed back to the 1950s style one piece neck with a walnut "skunk stripe" down the back.

 

* Rosewood Fingerboards, 1980 and later: Starting in 1980, Fender switched back to the slab rosewood fingerboard style, made from Indian rosewood (except on certain recent custom shop models).

[nevermind]

Thanks for the info guys. I have been to that site before, but somehow didn't bookmark it. Good info source. Thansk again.