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LieB
The guitar neck in the first picture has modern tuners, modern trussrod (the 50s and 60s Strats had the trussrod adjustment at the heel and no visible hole at the head), and a modern string tree. Plus the heavily flamed pattern was not common on originals.
The neck in the above photos is certainly aftermarket (from a close look at the Olson album cover, it was made by Kendrick, a British company who mostly make high-end Fender amplifier clones but also occasionally guitars and replacement parts).
As for this guitar being Taylor's '62, I'm not sure. This is the '62 we know about, stock rosewood neck, used on Dance Little Sister and possibly Time Waits For No One:
Talking to Jas Obrecht in 1979, Taylor says:
'
What kinds of Stratocasters do you own?The sunburst one that I have is a ’58. That’s on the cover of the new album [...]
Did you have the ’58 while you were with the Stones?I didn’t actually have that one, no. I had another one like it, which was stolen, also a sunburst with a maple neck.'
[
jasobrecht.com]
The latter reference to his Stones-era Strat having a maple neck confuses the issue somewhat, but he does make clear that the one on the cover of his solo album is a) a 1958 Strat and b) acquired after he left the Stones. From the album sleeve - front and back - it's clear that this guitar, in 1979, had a stock Fender neck with the maple fingerboard, as well as the stock pickups:
Even if the '62 pictured above isn't the Stones-era Strat he's referring to in that interview, it still seems pretty unlikely that Taylor would dump one stock Fender neck in order to replace it with another one, with a different fingerboard, within the space of a few years when - by all accounts - he wasn't playing that much.
So: is this '58 the one I initially posted about, and what's the deal with it today?
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2014-01-14 15:58 by Stoneburst.