A friend of mine stopped over earlier in the week with a "strat" in hand. He said "It's yours. I don't want anything to do with it." He told me that a while back he won it on an auction site. He then wanted to upgrade some parts, and he bought a new pickguard. It didn't line up with the existing one. So, he called Fender, and told them the situation. After 15 minutes, they told him it wasn't a Fender guitar, even though the neck had a Fender water slide. At that point, he wanted it out of his site, and just gave it to me.
After he left, I started going over it. I was stunned at how bad this was. I couldn't get the strings out of the tremolo. When I turned the guitar over, I noticed that the back cover's holes didn't line up with the tremolo string slots. I removed the cover, and could not believe that I was looking at the bottom of the bridge pickup. It was routed too deeply, and the wood between the top and bottom was missing. I had to shim the neck a ridiculous amount to get it to a playable level.
I then noticed that the tuning pegs were loose. Every single screw hole, was stripped in the headstock. I got a piece of maple veneer and some wood glue. I made a couple of toothpick size pieces from the veneer, and added them to each of the screw holes, and let them dry. Then put the tuning pegs back in, and was able to tighten them down snugly.
I did a fret level, crown and polish, and the neck looked really nice now.
I had a partscaster around, and I swapped the necks, which made one halfway decent guitar, and one really nice playing guitar that looks and plays like a real strat.. I offered the guitar back to my friend, but he wants no part of it.
So, I'm putting both guitars on Craigslist...as Partscasters. I will not be lying to potential buyers, like the tool that scammed my friend. These people really bug me.