Elite Stratocaster

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, as well as three serrated "rubber insert"-style control knobs.

The Freeflyte tremolo system differed significantly from previous Stratocaster tremolo designs. Instead of the normal from-the-back routing to accommodate the spring mechanism, all routing was done from the front of the guitar. A cavity was created where the spring system would reside, and this connected to the bottom of the tremolo unit; the result was an unwieldy, unworkable piece of hardware. The company saved money this way by performing a single, front-sided rout on the guitar to accommodate the pickups, the tremolo, the preamp and the controls.

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 12 dB of gain. The sound of the Elite Stratocaster can be described as a thicker, heavier sound than a normal single-coil-equipped guitar, especially with the TBX and MDX circuits at their maximum.

Only very few Elite Stratocasters were sold with a standard 5-way switch and regular Strat knobs; two of these guitars built for Eric Clapton came with a traditional '50s era-style maple neck and a hardtail non-tremolo bridge.

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. The Eric Clapton, Richie Sambora (introduced in 1992) and Buddy Guy (introduced in 1995) signature guitars retain the TBX/MDX design from the Elite.

Unlike the Elite, the MDX circuit on these guitars has 25dB of gain, with the Sambora signature model featuring a special active/passive push-push switch to bypass the preamp.

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.

One notable player of the Elite model is Ty Tabor of King's X, who used this guitar to record the first four albums of that band. His gear setup still retains the preamp from the guitar, now [http://guitargeek.com/rigview/305/ rackmounted] .

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. [http://www.21frets.com/fjs.html]