'08 Fender Bodies MIA same as MIM

Not necessarily.

 

i doubt it buy it could be posible

 

Usually a MIM body is several pieces glued together, sometimes with wood-filler to fill in the gaps. Sometimes it's not. You never know.

MIA bodies are almost always one to three piece bodies with pretty high grade wood.

 

Someone else can confirm but I don't think any MIA's, or any decent guitar anywhere has a body made of a single piece of wood (except maybe esoteric boutiques). Not only is it a lot more expensive and wasteful to use one piece but two pieces laminated together are actually stronger and less likely to warp.

 

Depends on the model I think. I'm sure I've seen it done before.

 

News to me. I've had over 20 MIA Fender in my life, and all of them have been at least 3-piece.

I've had at least 5 newer sunburst MIA Fenders and all of them were three pieces, and Fender doens't have high standards for grain matching either.

Although I agree that MIAs have much better quality woods. The alder on newer MIA is very light and resonant.

 

I had a '75 reissue that I could have sworn the body was 1 piece. It was either that or the seam on it was flawless.

 

MIA's are mostly 3 peice and the occaisional 2 piece (if ash).

MIM's are mostly made of 4 or more peices.

 

FMIC has told me that no production MIA has a one-piece body.

Two-piece are increasingly rare. When the "American" series came out in late 2000, in their temporary upgrading of the model to generate buzz, many premium-wood ash bodies were two-piece, but within a year they were back to three-piece. I have a beautiful two-piece ash HRPB.

MIMs and H1s have bodies that are made up of more pieces (3-6) of more dissimilar woods.

 

They do not use the same bodies. I was in both the MIA and the MIM factory in October and personally saw bass bodies being cut, sanded, etc.

 

Same here on my CS 59 P and AV 57 P -- both sunbursts, both don't appear to have seams. If they do Fender did a great job of hiding them.

 

1: Custom Shop output is not "production." It may (but probably doesn't) have a one-piece body.

2: It is virtually impossible to find the seam on a sunburst because the end-grain, where the seam will show, is covered. Remember that the visible-grain ash-bodied production instruments had a $150 MSRP upcharge simply for the matching.

All -- 100% -- of the alleged "one piece" Fender bodies owners claim to have that I have seen are two or three piece.

If FMIC tells me there have never been any one-piece FMIC production bodies, I think it's probably more than likely that the statement is true.

 

I have no idea, I just know they're both pretty to look at, comfortable to play, and sound great.

 

mims are great, i love both of my j's
but the routing on the mia is much more precise and clean on my mia

 

There have been periods in the past when pre-finish work and CNT cutting for MIM and MIA production have been on opposite sides of the border, as production routine is very fluid at FMIC, but with the exception of the H1, the MIA and MIM bodies have never been the same.

 

Let's see--same machines, same program and data, different wood--we have bodies cut the same from different wood. Big deal. The bottom line is simply how does it sound, IMHO. Pick one by hand or roll the dice. You choose.

 

Read this. http://www.guitarstop.com/tour/guitar.htm

 

"I had the pleasure of attending a tour in the month of April 2001."

The information there is very outdated. April 2001 might as well be the Middle Ages when it comes to FMIC production routines. Really. They never stop moving production back and forth on stuff and changing the way components are sourced and instruments built.

 

The bottom line is comparative production cost relative to retail price, too.

When I was current with FMIC's production, the then-"American" series blanks were supposedly made from two or three pieces cut from the same plank of wood.

The MIM-grade bodies were made from 3-6 random scrap pieces.

Which blank will probably have the better or a least more predictable tonal qualities? Which one would you feel justified in paying more for?