2008/2009 Fender MIM Telecaster with 7 pc Body & Maple caps?

7??

Man, at some point I think that should be called plywood.

 

My old 90's Strat was about 7 pieces

 

Yep. They made tons of them. You can tell, because the back and top look like one piece of Maple, which is a really thick Maple veneer. Is it like 1/8 or 3/16 thick caps? Let me tell you a rarely known secret: I've played more than one, that outperformed Alder and Ash. Very un-intutive, and contradictory to conventional, ostensible belief.

 

Oh, and I've got an Affinity thats made of 7 pieces. Its so well matched, you can only tell by the end grain, and even then it looks like 3 pieces till you pull out a magnifying glass.

 

Wow 7 pieces, hardly seems worth the trouble. I figured 3 to 5 would be common. So that's less than 2" wide per piece! I mean really? That's what happens when the bean counters figure out they can save 37 cents per body. Most of those in the pics above seem to be 5 piece...?
Up here in the PNW Alder is fire wood mostly. Although most kitchen cabinets are made of it now and it's stained to look like various other woods from pecan to maple. Alder grows super fast and is easily replenished.

My 98 MIM antique white Strat appears to have a maple cap from where the finish is worn off at the arm rest area, so the maple must be super thick...?
I dont know about the rest. It's the best sounding Strat I have actually, including an American.

 

Not something to look down on them for – not at all.

Would we rather they killed living things and then didn't use as much of the carcasses as possible?

More joins = a more stable blank.

They went through the trouble of dressing up all the joins for us, by veneering over them.

More labor time (i.e expense) went into making that body than most.

No, it's not "normal"...but it's not unheard of, and nothing about it is "bad."

 

It’s almost like sandwiching a kitchen cutting board in the middle

 

Go on....

 

I have been there.......Decided to strip my MIM jazz bass. Went at it with the heat gun slowly but still had that top layer bubble up in a spot. I was also surprised to see my bass made out of 7 or so pieces sandwiched between the two caps. I still have the bass and love it. I used some wood putty in the spot that tore out on the back and finished in tru oil. It was early on in my shade tree luthier adventures. Learned a lot though.

 

yep I refinished mine from maybe 2000 and it was the same...does kind of seems odd that its not 3 pieces -I think they stopped doing the caps the last few years or so...made it hard to do a decent refinish

 

I was just talking about this with some guys another forum today. My (now long gone) ‘07 MIM Standard was at least seven pieces. I found out when I stripped the polyester finish off. I was a little upset that I was getting nicer bodies on SX guitars from Rondo and swore off MIM until the Player series came out. Much better guitars.

 

There's not very much reason to strip polyester before refinishing. It's an excellent sealer – smooth and durable – over which you can spray any other kind of finish, with the appropriate prep. Not to mention that it's bear to strip. Stripping it before refinishing is just making unnecessary work for yourself. Going to a translucent finish is the only good reason I can think of to do it. And even when I do do it, I opt for mechanical and chemical stripping, not heat...for exactly this reason. You don't want to be using high heat to strip finish off of joints that are only held together by wood glue.

 

I did it about 10 years ago and went very slowly. Turned out really nice. I posted a thread about the job on here.

 

Is Mexico the new China or the other way around? Regardless...I hate polyester/urethane but I suppose I have to tolerate it. I own a '92 Epiphone Sorrento and a '93 "Squier Series" MIM strat. Worse finish I can think of for any stringed instrument.

 

https://www.tdpri.com/threads/polyester-is-for-the-70s-a-mim-tele-refinish.281014/
Here’s what I found when I stripped my ‘07.

 

I refinished my 1999 US Standard last year that had a cap front and back.

 

Yep,most sunburst American standards well into the 90s were made like that too,multipiece poplar body and alder cap.