strat with strange jackplate

A few weeks ago I repaired a strat. The owner told me it was a USA-strat which he bought used a couple of years ago. The neck was surely a Fender-neck but I doubt the body. I didn't have to take it that far apart to see if there were any factory-incriptions somewhere in the body. The only thing I noticed was the strange position of the outputjack. It was mounted in the pickguard (like a precision bass) and there was no metal jackplate or cavity for a jackplate at all. The colour of the body was cherry sunburst.

Does anyone of you know if this could possibly be a Fender body? To my opinion it must be a copy but I'm not quite sure. Thanks for your answers.

Sounds like an '83 Strat to me. They had the output jack in place of the middle pup tone control and a crook bridge.

Cheers,

Adam

In the early '80's the jacks were all over the place, including on the edge like a Les Paul. It could easily have been an original Fender body, as Adam Waldron says.

Were those the same bodies w/ no route in back
for the springs? Trem. mech was all internal

Yes, there is no back routing in this strat. I searched the internet and it appears to me that Fender made these Strats out of economical viewpoint. Producing a Fender like this meant they didn't have to route a jackplate-cavity and back-cavity. It also spared money by not having to mount an extra tone-pot + knob, a metal jackplate + trem-springs + trem-springguardplate. Also the wiring was simplified by using one tone-pot for the tone controled pups.

The bridge is a crook like Adam says, allbeit that I don't understand the word "crook". Is it a brandname or an expression for a tremolo-bridge of questionable quality?

And Australian colloquialism!

Crook = not very good, sick

Cheers,

Adam

So...if you're saying the control setup is:
1 Volume
1 Tone
1jack imput on the face where the second Tone would normally be, then you've got a 1983, and yes they were
so unpopular with the "wrong" jack that the run did not even last a full 12 months, customers were freaking out
and they were just about giving them away. Even today
you can pick up an '83 for usually less than a Reissue Mustang would go for.