Fender | Stevie Ray Vaughan 1963 Stratocaster “Number One”

Number One (also known as Vaughan’s ‘First Wife’) was a Fender Stratocaster used by Vaughan for most of his career; it was “rebuilt more times than a custom Chevy.” Vaughan always claimed it was a 1959 model, since that date was written on the back of the pick-ups; Rene Martinez, who maintained the guitar since 1980, saw the year 1963 stamped in the body and 1962 on the neck. The guitar was given to him by the owner of Ray Henning’s Heart of Texas music shop in Austin, Texas in 1973 and was his main performing instrument and companion. Vaughan used the guitar on all five of his studio albums and on Family Style. The distinctive cigarette burn on the headstock comes from an incident when Vaughan had left a burning cigarette tucked under the sixth string for too long while playing.

“Number One” had a neck relief of .012″ at the 7th and 9th frets, and leveled out through the remainder of the fingerboard. The fingerboard radius when new would have been 7.25 inches as were all pre CBS curved fingerboard Fenders but SRV’s guitar ended up after many refrets and sanding of the fingerboard as 10″ and used Dunlop 6100 fretwire. String height was measured to be 5/64″ on the high E string and 7/64″ on the low E string. Each string had 3 full winds for the best angle at the bone nut.