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Apparantly, back in the day fender didnt laquer over the top of their decals when they applied them, and just slapped them on and left it at that. I'm putting a decal onto my 66 stang and want to know if this is true?

thanks guys.

yup.

yes, and it's why when you see those 40-some-odd-year-old fenders the decals have a tendency to be torn away in places.

If I were you I'd still put it under the laquer unless you want it to chip away over time. It's one of those period correct things that would look better to most people done the modern way.

I think that by 66 they might have been doing that anyway. From memory it's only the first few years of the 60s that had the decal on top, maybe up to 64.

My 65 is on top. Not seen any others first hand.

Black Cat Bone wrote:My 65 is on top.

Mine, too. That might have been changed when they switched to poly laquer sometime in the late 60s?

My AV '57 Strat has the decal on top and a tiny bit of the d in Fender missing.

I don't have a pitcure on hand but my '64 Jag has its on top of the finish
this one KIND OF shows it in the bottom left part of the decal but you get the idea i'll probably be putting the decal on my jazzmaster im building underneath the nitro so it will last longer.

My '66 Jaguar decal is on top of the finish.

When Fender was rushing, they let bodies leave the factory with absolutely no clear coat at all, just a color coat.

From reading about strats it looks like 68 was the changeover year.

After Fender switched to poly lacquer they had problems painting over the decals with the poly. The decals would get wrecked, so up until the mid 70's Fender still used nitro on the headstock face to bury the decal on what was otherwise a poly finished guitar. Often this is evident because the headstock face's nitro coat has significantly yellowed with time, whereas the rest of the neck looks like new white maple under perfectly clear gloss. I'm not sure if all fenders of the early 70's were finished like this but I've seen quite a few. My '75 P-Bass is like this, whereas the 1976 Mustang that I used to own did not have nitro on the headstock, just poly. I believe that Fender stopped doing this once they started applying the serial number to the headstock on the decal, but again I'm not sure.

really interesting and useful stuff. thanks guys.

does anyone have a close up of a period mustang headstock so i can line it up jus' perfect?
cheers.

just do an image search on google:
i imagine the placement varied wildy.

astro wrote:After Fender switched to poly lacquer they had problems painting over the decals with the poly. The decals would get wrecked, so up until the mid 70's Fender still used nitro on the headstock face to bury the decal on what was otherwise a poly finished guitar. Often this is evident because the headstock face's nitro coat has significantly yellowed with time, whereas the rest of the neck looks like new white maple under perfectly clear gloss.

Saying that made me think of this:

mage wrote:some rainy day seattle pictures...

taylornutt wrote:If you add more pics, make sure to get some neck shots as well.

the neck you say? alright, will try to get some later.

When Mage posted that, I was stuck thinking for a while why the face of the headstock looked dramatically different from the rest of the maple.