1956 FENDER STRATOCASTER

As mentioned elsewhere in this piece, Seven Decades tries to use 80 per cent of its collection of vintage guitars in live shows, an approach typified by the beautiful but well-used 1957 Strat that was the first vintage guitar that Seven Decades acquired. A minority of the collection’s guitars, however, are in such perfect condition that they are used for static exhibition purposes only. And one example is this stunning 1956 Stratocaster. This was the last year that Strats were produced with an ash body as standard, transitioning to alder on sunburst Strats as the year progressed – a switch that brought attendant changes to the finishing procedure used to produce the yellow background of the ’burst, from a spray-on technique to a dye. Another detail that changed in ’56 was the replacement of a round string tree for the rectangular ‘butterfly’ type that is more commonly associated with the Strat in the present day. Soft-V profile necks also started to appear from mid-1965 onwards.