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Here is an example of a "slaughtered" L 63

Back in the late 70 s and until the mid 80 s there was no "vintage guitars", there were new guitars and second hand guitars.Most guitar players wanted to look "cool" and lots of them  were convinced that a guitar with no finish looked and sounded better. Very often as soon as they got a little money to spend they would run to the local repairman and ask him to strip this ugly red or green down to the bear wood (bye bye fiesta red or sea foam green...sniffles), to throw out these old pick ups and parts, drill a couple of nice big holes to install a floyd rose  and fit in an active electronic. Sometimes they would keep the original pickguard but replace the original blade switch with some much cooler mini swicthes and therefore drill some nice extra holes in the original green guard etc etc...

Here is an example of a "slaughtered" L 63.

     

As you can see,all the original color has been stripped down and all the originial pickguard and pick ups are gone. Lucky enough tho it didn t get any Floyd rose or fancy Khaller tremolo installed. No extra routing and no heavy damage were done to the body or headstock shape and the original tuners miraculously  survived so that made it just the perfect base for a restoration. After a  long search his owner Elliot Check  found a set of original pick ups from the same era and got it refinished by the talented "RS Guitar workshop" who did a gorgeous nitro cellulo slightly aged surf green on it.

Patrice Boudot-Lamot the owner of the all original "Strat 54" pictured on my website told me that back in the early 80 s when he bought that instrument, everyone was making fun of him and some bands didn t want to have him playing it on stage because they thought it was butt ugly... Very few musicians back then liked the older guitars but these who did and kept their instruments away from the floyd rose and refinishing demons and didn t trade their "LP standard 58" for an active charvel are now the lucky and proud owner of some real rare birds.

Not only Fenders got "customized" during the evil 80 s.It s quite common to see a "LP junior" with an extra pick up added somewhere or even a nice "57 goldtop" with a "shift 2000" tremolo, a "6120" with some gibson humbuckers or an "acoustic L5" turned into an electric one and of course the classic bigsby holes that are the plague of many guitar tops. Fortunatly  It s much harder to change something major on a "set neck" instrument than on a fender where everything is attached with a few screws and made easy to access and remove.That s also another reason why  100% original fenders are very hard to find.Very few survived the evil years of the "natural finish",floyd rose and other active electronic fashion and it s so easy to swap a neck or pick-ups that you really need to take a close look to tell if the guitar is 100% factory original.That s probably what is contributing very high end collectors to look for "one-owner"guitars thinking it s more or less a way to ensure the integrity of their investments.The ironie in all this quest of the holy original Fenders is that if you look at the early fender commercials it s said :" No more expensive refretting !!! just simply change your neck ..."