According to the internets:
First Wife Or Number 1 Stratocaster This is perhaps the most familiar Stratocaster that Stevie Ray played and it was also his favorite. This guitar was a battered 1963 Stratocaster with a 1962 neck.
Stevie believed that the body was made in 1959, but a recent examination of the guitar by several Fender employees confirms that it was a 1963 model.
Stevie first purchased Number One in 1973 from Ray's music Exchange store in Austin Texas, following his departure from the Nightcrawlers. Shortly afterwards, he joined the Cobras with Paul Ray.
In an interview, Stevie Ray said that he knew straight away that there was something special about First Wife. He liked the sunburst finish and the thick, oddly shaped D-neck. Stevie Ray has been known to have large hands and so the unusually thick neck felt comfortable.
"I didn't even have to play it - I just knew by the way it looked that it would sound great. I was carrying my '63 Strat and asked if [Ray] would like to trade.
Thank God he did, and it's been my main axe even since." Number One originally had a white pickguard and a right-handed tremelo bar.
Stevie replaced the white pickguard with a black one that now adds the "SRV" lettering. Rene Martinez (Stevie's guitar technician 1985) recalls how Stevie would sometimes resort to searching the ground around truck stops to find replacement letters when the old ones scratched off.
In 1977, Stevie added a gold left handed tremelo allowing him to recreate his own upside down guitar (Jimi Hendrix and Otis Rush). The case concerning Stevie Ray's pickups have classed some debate.
Many SRV fans believe that Stevie sent the pickups to Fender to be rewound, and that they were over wound by accident. The amazing sound of Number One seems to support this idea, but the Fender employees who examined the guitar reported that the pickups were stock except for the shielding that had been added.
Eventually, Stevie, with the help of Rene replaced the Stratocasters stock frets and upgraded them with Dunlop 6100 bass style frets. These huge frets gave Stevie Ray the sustain he needed and helped during string bending.
They were also especially important to Stevie as he always use the thickest string sizes, ranging from .013 to .018! It was common that Stevie Ray's hands would wear out and tear through his skin, so sometimes, Rene would convince him to switch to smaller strings.
Number One had been severely abused during it's lifetime with Stevie. On stage, Stevie Ray would kick it, pound it, rattle it, ride it like a surfboard and even holding it by the tremelo bar. Number One could only take a certain amount of abuse before Stevie Ray was considering retiring it in 1989.
All the abuse scratched and stripped the finish on the body.
Stevie's strumming also wore out the surface of the guitar, particularly above the strings. A huge gouge is visible on the top of the guitar.
As if you thought that wasn't enough, sometimes, Stevie Ray would bounce his guitar off a wall, catch it, and keep playing.
This was a trick that his brother, Jimmie Vaughan introduced him to. This damage caused the headstock to nearly split in two. This was repaired by Rene. The taped-up headstock can be seen in a picture on the inside of the CD leaf from In The Beginning. The neck had been repaired so many times that it eventually would not take new frets. It was beginning to get difficult to play it.
Rene resorted exchanging the neck from Scotch to Number One. In 1990, that neck was broken at a show in Holmdell, New Jersey, when a piece of stage equipment fell on several of Stevie's guitars. Rene eventually ordered a replacement neck from Fender and received a copy of the 1962 neck.
Number One is currently in possession of Jimmie Vaughan, Stevie Ray's brother (After Stevie's death, Rene Martinez put the original neck back on Number One and presented it to the Vaughan family), although there are rumors that Number One was buried with Stevie in Dallas.
