When I first played it the action was very high, the strings may well have been the originals and I was worried it might need at least a partial refret (binding troubles oh noes). Lucikly a lot of the buzzing was coming from the strings not quite clearing the neck pickup. There's no way to lower the pickup other than removing the black plastic it sits on, so I had to shim the neck. You can see the angle of the tan line is already quite steep. When I took it off it already had five things in there. The small plastic piece you can see in the neck pocket photo, a slightly thicker piece of the same, and then three of the original Fender paper ones (two red one grey) I added a bit to the whole pocket to raise the whole thing and then a little extra to the end to tilt it more. Not much of a difference overall but enough to clear the pickup with lower action. It's pretty good now but I need to spend some time setting up the bridge to get it to play well. After the shimming the frets don't seem too bad at all. They're fairly low, as you'd expect for a 40+ year old guitar that looks and feels like it's been played a lot but there are no obvious dead spots and they've been levelled/stoned at least somewhat recently.
What was odd is that under the pickguard it's more green than the rest of the body. Even under the pickups that's the case. The only places I could find original colour were under the neck plate, in the neck pocket and under the small piece the tailpiece attaches to. Although there's a really nice area where your forearm rests as you play it that the clearcoat is worn away to give it a darker blue colour. Almost like a hint of purple burst. The colour is absolutely stunning, though. It's near green under yellow house lights, as it is in the lacquer checking photo of the low E horn under standard light and just a beautifully thin and glassy.
The neck has all that vintage Fender goodness. It's fairly similar to Mike's Jaguar in terms of the feel of the materials (back of the neck, binding, fretboard and frets). I can't describe the thickness in comparison to other Fenders but it seems to me it has that 60s Fender feel in spades. The blocks have a very '3D' look and they'd discoloured unevenly. Some are a slightly peachy off white and some still fairly white. Maybe that means some are replacements but they look good for sure.
The bridge has a glued down baseplate but I think other than that it's all original. A few screws have the cross rounded out though they still work, and one pickguard mounting screw is missing. The bridge has a serial number on the underside but I haven't looked into that at all yet.
I'm going to try stringing it with some flatwound strings, and will try and get it set up to 'play like buttah' then, but for now I'm happy with it. With a little more work it's going to be fantastic.
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