The Rarest of the Rare! The Earliest "Maple Cap" We Have Ever Seen!
Complete With the Original Hang-Tag

This super rare June 1965, maple-cap Stratocaster weighs just 7.40 lbs. and has a nice, fat nut width of just under 1 11/16 inches and a scale length of 25 1/2 inches. One-piece alder body contoured on back and lower bass bout. One-piece maple neck with a wonderful medium profile. Maple-cap fretboard with 21 original medium-to-thin frets and black dot position markers. Small headstock with transitional "Fender" logo in gold with black trim, "Stratocaster" in black beside it, and "With Synchronized Tremolo" and four patent numbers in black below ("Pat. 2,573,254 2,960,900 2,741,146 3,143,028"). Single "butterfly" string tree with nylon spacer. Individual "dual-line" Kluson Deluxe tuners with oval metal buttons (each one stamped on the underside "D-169400 / Patent No."). Three light-gray bottom, white plastic-covered single-coil pickups with staggered polepieces and outputs of 5.91k, 6.10k, and 6.00k. On the underside of each pickup are the following black pen markings "9.28.65 Bernie 3" (neck) 'Bernie 9.28.65 6" (middle) and "RH 9.28.65 16" (bridge). 'Three-layer (white/black/white) plastic pickguard with eleven screws and full size aluminium shield. Three controls (one volume, two tone) plus three-way selector switch, all on pickguard. The potentiometers are all dated "304 6532" (Stackpole, August, 1965). Inside the neck pickup cavity in pencil is written "V S O". Jack socket in body face. White plastic knobs with green lettering. Fender "Synchronized Tremolo" combined bridge & tailpiece. This guitar is in near mint condition, with no fretboard wear, virtually no fret wear, only the absolute bare minimum of belt buckle marking on the back (which you can't see unless you hold the guitar up against a light), a few tiny marks on the sides, and the bare minimum of body checking. On the white plastic tremolo cover on the back of the guitar, two of the corners (approximately 1/8 and 1/4 inch in size) at the bottom have broken away where the screws have been over tightened. With all that said this exceptionally rare guitar is in near mint (9.25) condition. Complete with the original tremolo arm and bridge cover, Also the original twelve-page Fender Stratocaster Instruction Manual with matching serial number. Housed in its original Fender black hardshell case with black leather ends and red plush lining (9.25).

This guitar is a wonderful, typical 1965 three-tone Sunburst. Maple caps were offered on Stratocasters as a factory option from 1967 to late 1969. All of these were with the CBS large headstock and were much favored by many guitarists, including the late, great Jimi Hendrix. All maple-cap Stratocasters are notoriously rare. This guitar, with an original small pre-CBS headstock and a neck date of "2 JUN 65 B," predates by two years any known maple-cap Stratocaster. This actual guitar is recorded in Werner's List as: "L46968 JUN 65 Strat M/N."

"The Stratocaster was launched during 1954 [and was priced at $249.50, or $229.50 without vibrato]. Samples around May and June were followed by the first proper production run in October. The new Fender guitar was the first solidbody electric with three pickups [Gibson's electric-acoustic ES-5, introduced five years earlier, had been the overall first], meaning a range of fresh tones, and featured a new-design vibrato unit that provided pitch-bending and shimmering chordal effects. The new vibrato -- erroneously called a 'tremolo' by Fender and many others since -- was troublesome in development. But the result was the first self-contained vibrato unit: an adjustable bridge, a tailpiece, and a vibrato system, all in one. It wasn't a simple mechanism for the time, but a reasonably effective one...Fender's new vibrato had six bridge-pieces, one for each string, adjustable for height and length, which meant that the feel of the strings could be personalized and the guitar made more in tune with itself...The Strat came with a radically sleek, solid body, based on the outline of the 1951 Fender Precision Bass. Some musicians had complained to Fender that the sharp edge of the Telecaster's body was uncomfortable...so the Strat's body was contoured for the player's comfort. Also, it was finished in a yellow-to-black sunburst finish. Even the jack socket mounting was new, recessed in a stylish plate on the body face...the Fender Stratocaster looked like no other guitar around [and in some ways seemed to owe more to the contemporary automobile design than traditional guitar forms], especially the flowing, sensual curves of that beautifully proportioned, timeless body. The Stratocaster's new-style pickguard complemented the lines perfectly, and the overall impression was of a guitar where all the components ideally suited one another. The Fender Stratocaster has since become the most popular, the most copied, the most desired, and very probably the most played solid electric guitar ever" (Tony Bacon, 50 Years of Fender, p. 18).