dating a guild guitar stamped used on headstock

This guitar also has Mickey Mantle’s autograph on the back of the body, who signed it on April 10, 1985, when Stevie was invited to play the national anthem at the Houston Astros season opener at the Houston Astrodome. He kept the tremolo arm, pickups and frets in their original condition, but added his signature and initials on the neck plate and pickguard. Stevie decided to replace the neck with the mid-’50s-style maple neck given to him by Billy Gibbons. It was refinished by the previous owner with a dark natural color, and it had arty inlay behind the bridge. The guitar was originally a 3-tone sunburst maple-neck model with a rosewood fingerboard. The plan worked out, and they presented the guitar to Stevie on October 3rd 1980 at Steamboat Springs – nightclub he often played at. That didn’t stop his wife, Lenora, who talked to a couple of Stevie’s friends to cash in $50 each, so they could give it to him as a birthday present. Unfortunately it cost $350, and he couldn’t afford it at that time. This guitar first caught Stevie’s attention around 1979, when he went with couple of friends to a pawnshop in Austin, Texas.

Number One is currently in the possession of Jimmy Vaughan. After that, Number One had a new Fender neck until after Stevie died, when the original Number One neck was re-installed on it. Unfortunately that neck was broken into pieces at a show in Holmdell, New Jersey, when a piece of stage equipment fell on several of Stevie’s guitars. The neck eventually became damaged beyond repair, so Rene figured out he’d put the neck from Stevie’s 1962 red Stratocaster on it. The headstock was fitted Fender Schaller Elite Gold tuner pegs. This was a consequence of countless refret jobs done by Rene Martinez, who mostly used Dunlop 6100 fretwire. The fingerboard radius was originally 7.25″ but eventually came down to 10″. Stevie’s Number One is finished in sunburst and it’s original neck has a thick, D-shaped profile with 1-5/8″ (41mm) nut width. It was not until 1980 that Rene Martinez took the whole guitar apart and saw the year 1963 stamped in the body and 1962 on the neck. It is rumoured, although not proved, that he believed it was a 1959 model because he once took the pickups off and realized that they were made in 1959, so he made a conclusion from that. The guitar was built using a 1963 Stratocaster body and a 1962 neck, even though Stevie believed it was a 1959 Stratocaster. Number One originally had a white pickguard which was replaced with a black one that now adds the “SRV” logo, and a right-handed tremolo bar – now gold-plated left-handed. He got it from the owner of Ray Henning’s Heart of Texas music shop in 1973, and it quickly became his main companion.

Dating a guild guitar stamped used on headstock