SRV1, Our Stevie Ray Vaughan Custom Strat Debuts! Enter It’s Your Guitar’s Stevie Ray Vaughan road-ready replica! Listen here!
SRV Stats
- Body: Basswood (relic)
- Neck: Maple, medium “C” profile, hand-shaped, tung-oil finish
- Fretboard: Rosewood
- Tuners: 6-in-line, engraved headstock with “Stevie Ray Vaughan” signature
- Pick-ups: Alnico V
- Left-handed bridge/tremelo
- “SRV” and “Custom” stickers
- Stamped on back of headstock: “SRV by IYG, February 2021.”
- Weight: 5 lbs.
Blues Master
Stevie Ray Vaughan played the blues. He also played a beat-up old Fender Stratocaster he called Number One. Number One was distinctive — worn down to bare wood from sweat and hard strumming, adorned with reflective “SRV” and “Custom” stickers, and retro-fitted with a left-handed whammy bar, itself an homage to Stevie Ray’s own guitar idol, Jimi Hendrix.
According to Austin City Limits:
Number One is a “ragged American Stratocaster with 1959 pickups, a ’62 neck, and a ’63 body, reveals upon inspection a brutally worn finish, upside-down tremolo bar, cigarette-burnt headstock”. Vaughan acquired this instrument in 1974 from Ray Hennig’s Heart of Texas Music.
Austin City Limits
Another Road-Ready Replica Is Born
SRV is our latest road-ready replica guitar. Rocco and I began by striping down a perfectly fine strat body and beating it up, sanding off the finish, and denting-and-dinging as needed. We tried to get it as close to SRV’s original as possible. Then we locked everything in with a whisper-tin coat of tung oil.
The maple/rosewood neck is hand-shaped, filed, and sanded to a medium “C” profile, and finished with tung oil. We tried to darken the ends of the neck some stain and leave the middle light but it didn’t turn out very well. The top and bottom of the neck are too dark. However, if you play this guitar hard for a couple of years — and we hope you do! — the neck coloring will mellow and appear more authentic.
The same goes for the back of the guitar. Rocco and I did a bit of sanding, but we’ll leave it to you — and your big Texas belt buckle — to wear it down further.
Rocco and I grabbed Stevie Ray’s autograph off the internet and laser-engraved it onto the headstock. It’s like Stevie Ray himself signed off on IYG’s six-string mojo machine!
Why Are Stevie Ray Vaughan Replica Guitars So Expensive?
Back in 2003, Fender’s custom shop issued 100 SRV Number One replica guitars with a price tag of $10,000 each. Today these guitars fetch upwards of $50,000 apiece. You can also buy Stevie Ray Vaughan replica guitars in the $1500-$2500 range from a number of dealers.
But why are they so expensive?
Is SRV your guitar?
We think so.
What a gorgeous replica of SRV’s “#1” Strat! Unfortunately, even though I’m a musician and a huge SRV fan, I’m also mildly disabled (and have been since birth) and my family is going through some financial difficulties at the moment so…..I can’t afford one of these guitars even though I want one VERY MUCH! :'(
God Bless,
Tony Trout