Elite Stratocaster

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The Elite Stratocaster is an electric solid body guitar made by Fender. It was introduced in 1983 and discontinued in 1984.

Although known as the first Fender guitar to feature active electronics, the Elite Strat served as a template for the Eric Clapton signature model of 1988.

This guitar featured an alder body, a maple neck featuring a rosewood or maple fingerboard with 21 jumbo frets, Schaller die-cast tuners with pearloid buttons, BiFlex truss-rod system with MicroTilt neck adjuster, Schaller Straplock Ready locking strap buttons, two hardened steel EasyGlider string trees, side-mount jack socket and a Freeflyte vibrato system.

Other features included three special-design Alnico 5 single-coil pickups with solid covers and an internal dummy coil for hum cancellation, as well as three push-push buttons for pickup selection. Controls include a master volume, a TBX treble/bass expander and an active MDX midrange booster with 12dB of gain.

Two other variants of the guitar were introduced in late 1983, the Gold Elite Stratocaster with gold plated hardware and the Walnut Elite Stratocaster featuring a solid walnut body and a stained ebony fingerboard.

The Elite Stratocaster and all its variants were discontinued in late 1984, due notably to performance problems generally associated with the unsuccessful Freeflyte bridge. Some of the Elite features are now found on the newer USA-made Fender guitars and basses made after the purchase of Fender from CBS by Bill Schultz in 1985.

In addition to the Stratocaster model, the Elite Series line also included a twin-humbucker Telecaster and two Precision Bass guitars with one or two split-coil humbucking pickups and a fine-tuning bridge assembly.

Japanese-made versions have been introduced in late 1983. They were similar to the American-made Elite guitars, except for the addition of a 22-fret fingerboard with a flat 9.5" radius and medium-jumbo fretwire. [1]