Fender Stratocaster Elite Gold 1983 Natural

The Elite Stratocaster was introduced in 1983 and discontinued in 1984. It served as a template for the Eric Clapton signature model of 1988.
One player of the Elite model is Ty Tabor of King's X, who used this guitar to record the first four albums of that band. His gear setup still retains the preamp from the guitar, now rackmounted.Some of the Elite features have been incorporated into USA-made Fender guitars and basses made after the purchase of the Fender guitar company from CBS by Bill Schultz in 1985. For example the Eric Clapton, Richie Sambora (introduced in 1991) and Buddy Guy (introduced in 1995) signature guitars retain the TBX/MDX design from the Elite.

This guitar model featured an alder body, a maple neck featuring a rosewood or maple fingerboard with 21 jumbo frets, Schaller die-cast tuners with pearloid buttons, BiFlex truss-rod system with MicroTilt neck adjuster, Schaller Straplock Ready locking strap buttons, two hardened steel EasyGlider string trees, side-mount jack socket and a Freeflyte vibrato system, as well as three serrated "rubber insert"-style control knobs.
The Freeflyte tremolo system differs significantly from previous Stratocaster tremolo designs. All routing is done from the front of the guitar. A cavity was created where the spring system would reside, and this connected to the bottom of the tremolo unit; the result was an unwieldy, unworkable piece of hardware. The company saved money this way by performing a single, front-sided rout on the guitar to accommodate the pickups, the tremolo, the preamp and the controls.
Other features included three special-design Alnico 5 single-coil pickups with solid covers and an internal dummy coil for hum cancellation, as well as three push-push buttons for pickup selection. Controls include a master volume, a TBX treble/bass expander and an active MDX midrange booster with 12 dB of gain. The sound of the Elite Stratocaster can be described as a thicker, heavier sound than a traditional single-coil-equipped guitar, especially with the TBX and MDX circuits at their maximum.
A few Elite Stratocasters were manufactured with a standard 5-way switch and standard Strat knobs. Two such guitars which were custom built for Eric Clapton came with a traditional '50s era-style maple neck and a hardtail non-tremolo bridge.
Two other variants of the guitar were introduced in late 1983, the Gold Elite Stratocaster with gold plated hardware and the Walnut Elite Stratocaster featuring a solid walnut body and a stained ebony fingerboard.

Guitar with brass hardware (apparently 22k gold-plated). Rosewood fretboard. The bottom tone knob enables a second tier of pickup selections on the 5 way selector lever, thus allowing for 9 pickup configuration selections. It has a five-way selector switch, too. The headstock of "The Strat" is different from all previous Stratocaster models