Terry Kath owned a #0003 Stratocaster. Terry was the founder and mastermind behind the early rendition of the band Chicago. A fantastic self-taught guitar player and band leader, and supposedly Jimi Hendrix would tell people to check out Terry because "He played better than me" Chicago would go on and open for Jimi on a few occasions. Terry would sadly die from an accidental self inflicted gunshot wound in 1978 at only 31 years old, just a week before his 32nd birthday. A major loss for music. If you like Frank Zappa, Check out early Chicago under Terry's helm. Absolutely worth it.

Back to the guitar:

There is zero documented knowledge about this guitar, We do not know how Terry actually got it either. This guitar, along with a few other of his guitars, was long presumed lost, until Terry's daughter Michelle set out to make a documentary about her father called "The Terry Kath Experience" from 2017 which is worth checking out.

One of the reoccurring questions of this documentary was the whereabout of his guitars, In the documentary, Michelle set out to primarily to find his famed "Pignose Tele".

The trail led to her Grandparents who had the Pignose sitting in a closet, but the Pignose also shared that closet with the 0003 Strat. There were also two other guitars found (An acoustic and a SG). Seems they were not so lost after all and still within the family. So far, yet so close.

Funny they were with Terry's parents all the time for over 40 years, and Michelle did not know. She must have.. Anyway, when she opened the cases to those guitars they have clearly never been used since Terry was alive.

Terry liked to modify his guitars to his liking. But this guitar seems to be little tampered with.

• It has a anodized gold pickguard and looks very similar to the 0001 Strat. The only thing i noticed was the Tremolo (which obviously is a Chrome plated one) seems to be switched out with a later one that to my eyes it seems to be a CBS Mazak bridge.

• The Knobs are not the short skirt polystyrene as they used back in 1954.

I would not be surprised if this is a partcaster entirely. But that is yet to be documented until someone can take it apart.

Screenshots from the documentary:

So here is a shout-out to Michelle Kath Sinclair. Did you do anything to this guitar? The Pignose got a tribute build from Fender, but no word on this one. We guitar nerds want to know more.. Get back to us if you can please!