The Squier '51 is an electric guitar made by Squier, a subsidiary of Fender. The '51 is notable for being one of the few original designs made by Squier, which normally manufactures less expensive authorized copies of Fender's popular guitars and bass guitars. Construction The '51 combines aspects of several of Fender's best-known instruments. The body outline resembles a standard Fender Stratocaster, while the single-ply plastic pickguard and chrome control plate is reminiscent of early incarnations of the Fender Precision Bass. The neck is essentially that of a Fender Telecaster, with same square heel and peg head designs. The bridge is a top-loaded hardtail plate secured by 5 screws, with 6 cast metal saddles on a 2 1/16" E-to-e spacing. The '51 uses a humbucker pickup in the bridge position and a single-coil (R≈3.5kΩ) pickup in the neck position. The 4-wire bridge pickup allows for coil splitting by pulling up on the volume control knob to limit the humbucker to single-coil output. The neck pickup is slanted with respect to the strings, better aligning the single-coil pole spacings under narrower spacing of the strings. The lower control knob is a three-position rotary switch, selecting between the neck pickup, neck + humbucker, or humbucker. The guitar body is basswood 1-9/16" thick (~1/4" thinner than standard Strats), with edge reliefs for forearm & belly, with 2 separate pickup cavities, connected by a drilled passage started from the neck pocket. The pickup-to-switch cavity wire passage is also drilled from the side (as opposed to top routed recesses), leaving the finished top relatively plain and uncluttered under the large pickguard. The production neck and fret board is one piece maple, with peg-head and square heel profile identical to Telecasters, routed from backside for a peghead-accessible truss rod, the slot capped with "skunk-stripe" of darker wood. Rare specimens were constructed from two piece necks, with a maple fingerboard laminated to a maple neck. Birds eye figuring of the neck is not uncommon. The '51 was polyurethane-coated in three colors: 2-Tone Sunburst, Black, and Vintage Blonde. The blonde model has a cream-yellow hue and typically, a black pick guard. The sunburst and black models have a white pick guard. Although all Squier promotional pictures depict the Vintage Blonde model with a black pickguard, they were manufactured with both black and white pickguards. White pickguards were standard from the beginning of production until October 2004, during which