OK, ladies and gentlemen: For your viewing pleasure, here are the Stratocasters:
http://www.hurdygurdy.com/mailinglist/guitars.htm At the bottom, there's a link to a photo of a Strat. But before you go there, consider the following: Based on the "iconography": How many strings does the Strat have? How many pickups does the Strat have? How many knobs does it have? How many frets does it have? Some of these are easily answered from the drawings, some not so much. Michael Muskett already made my point for me pretty well, saying that the sculptors and artists were unlikely to be truly familiar with the instrument. Imagine researching an obscure instrument with no books, no Internet (horrors!) and only your own experiences and those of your collegues. \ Jocelyn makes a reasonable argument that the artists were professionals, while we who made the drawings are not. I could bolster this by noting that while fewer people were literate, people were better trained in observation and memorization than they are nowadays. But my point is that even though some of the contributors are very familiar with the instrument, nobody's drawing really accurately answers the questions. We could go on about this for a long time, and there's no real way to prove anything one way or another except with a time machine. I'm certainly not discounting the iconography - in fact I love it - but I'm also going to disagree pretty strongly with someone who takes its accuracy too seriously. Falling asleep at the keyboard, Alden
