On a Strat, what is this useless cavity on the body?

[Dreamert]

The round one below the neck and middle pickups? There is no lead to any other cavity, nothing goes there on the pickguard.....just wondering why it's there. That's a MIM Strat body btw.

 

[m4rk0]

it is to hide your secret stash!!

I have seen mexican strats with 2 or 3 of those before..

 

[Cagey]

That's an indexing hole. It's used to orient/locate the body on the CNC machine(s) that cut out the body and route the pickup and control cavities. You only see them on MIM Strats for some reason I've never been privy to. It's possible Fender USA and the MIJ Strats use a different indexing point. Warmoth bodies have them, too, but it's where the pickup cavities go so they get eliminated in later operations. You can see it here in the middle of a Warmoth body...

 

[Tonar8352]

Runaway router or the CNC programmer had a wild weekend and a rough Monday morning.  :laughing7:

 

[B3Guy]

its for pennies.

 

[m4rk0]

tone pennies??

I thought it was a place to breed tone worms...

 

[Dreamert]

At last, some facts that make sense  :headbang:

Thanks guys, so this is to hide pills, good to know  :laughing7:

 

[spauldingrules]

That's where your x-factor mega humbucker goes for teh metalz.

 

[AutoBat]

Interesting.  my MIM body doesn't have those. 

I must admit I nearly commented asking what it was.  I'm glad I wasn't the only one.

 

[B3Guy]

tone pennies??

I thought it was a place to breed tone worms...

if my memory serves me, you put termites inside before a performance, so that by the time you are done, you can crumble the guitar body by hand. the fans go wild over that stuff.

 

[Cagey]

Interesting.  my MIM body doesn't have those. 

I must admit I nearly commented asking what it was.  I'm glad I wasn't the only one.

There's some back & forth between the US and Mexico factories to maintain production quantities of certain parts in both plants, although you'll never see a US Strat with those holes. You will sometimes see MIM Strats with more than one hole, though.

 

[Dreamert]

Yeah second MIM body I just bought off Ebay has it as well:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rt=nc&nma=true&item=280613449241&si=N6NF0eWN%252BwYnEMaKXnQbir%252B%252BrF0%253D&viewitem=&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWNX%3AIT

 

[Cagey]

Good for you! Nice deal on that body. Tough to get even Pacific Rim bodies at that price.

 

[mayfly]

And people complain about burnthrough on warmoth strat bodes 

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Yes, we do.

 

[reinhold]

If I remember my MIM strat correct, it has three of those with a channel running between all of them for some reason, but maybe I'm just forgetful.

 

[Dreamert]

Good for you! Nice deal on that body. Tough to get even Pacific Rim bodies at that price.

Yeah as soon as I setup on my first project and I had that fancy of building a 'nicer' one, all white with gold hardware with noiseless Lac Sensor pickups so I couldn't pass on that body when I saw it even though this project is farther down the road.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

The 2 MIM Teles I've had the pickguards off of had similar index holes, as well as similar dugouts around the neck pocket.

 

[mayfly]

It's like a bowling ball!  :headbang:

 

[tangent]

You sure?  I have a 2009 American strat that has one, swamp ash body..

I guess it doesn't really matter if it was made in US or Mexico since it was cut on a CNC machine either way, its mostly the american QA and finish work on the neck that you pay for at any rate.

Interesting.  my MIM body doesn't have those. 

I must admit I nearly commented asking what it was.  I'm glad I wasn't the only one.

There's some back & forth between the US and Mexico factories to maintain production quantities of certain parts in both plants, although you'll never see a US Strat with those holes. You will sometimes see MIM Strats with more than one hole, though.