"Frankenstein's Guitar"

When I first came across it, it was advertised as a "Fender Guitar" with no estimate next to it. I magnified the headstock and it said Fender and something that looked like it started with S. I could see it was a hollow body so I thought proper Starcaster and that I would have a little punt but that it would be well outbid, so didn't give it another thought. Come the auction and I still expected to be easily outbid; then it came up and I wasn't! It didn't even come close to what I had put down as my maximum and for a moment or two I was virtually dancing on air, then I looked at it again and thought "that's not a Starcaster headstock" and "isn't a Starcaster an offset body shape?" so I reminded myself of exactly what a proper Starcaster looks like and this clearly wasn't one: but it did look quite a bit like an early Coronado with a replacement tailpiece, (some of the early ones had dots and not bars for fret markers; and they also had a natural finish version). However it looking at it further the ƒ holes are wrong and there should be 4 control knobs not 3. The best I can come up with now is that it is some kind of Japanese hollow body, maybe with a stratocaster neck? but more likely just a fake Fender decal. I can see the tailpiece is a replacement though, there are 3 holes that would probably have meant originally there would have been some kind of whammy bar, (I did think here about the odd whammy bar that original Coronados had when I was still hoping it was a Coronado), so working out exactly who made it and what it was, is going to be hard especially before it gets here so I won't try, I'll just have to console myself that it looks quite smart and it didn't cost a lot.

It's here now and it's certainly not a Fender, it's a Frankenstein! My best guess for the neck is that it's a Squire that has had the Squire decal removed and replaced with a hooky Fender decal, because apart from the Fender, that rest of it is straight from a Squire headstock right down to the serial number, (that dates the neck to the late 80's), and the little "by Fender" byline. The rest of the body though, ??????! (best guess - Kawai),  There is no label inside the sound hole to help and from the plethora of small screw holes, not only is it a replacement tailpiece, but the pick guard, the bridge and the pickups are replacements too! There are no obvious holes indicating the control panel has been replaced but I'm not going to take it off to check for sure. 

Not counting all of the replacements this guitar looks very tired and worn; all of the odd screw holes don't help either. This is definitely one I should have looked further into and avoided, but it's here now and it does play so welcome to the Pony Guitar Sanctuary, (and maybe I should lose all of the squire parts of the headstock logo and put on one of those fake Coronado decals?)