Little by little I'm upgrading/swapping out various parts on my Strata to get them closer to vintage spec. The pots, p'ups, & finishes are pretty simple if you know what is what. Trem blocks are a little bit different story. For many years (as far back as I can recall, anyhow) reissue trem blocks had the holes you feed the strings through reamed out pretty deep so that the ball end was quite near the bridge once the string was pulled through & brought to proper tension. On vintage strats this was not the case. The holes were shallow so that you could see the ball near the block face. In fact, some were so shallow as to allow the ball end to protrude a little.
So I'm poking around eBay, looking at blocks vintage, Callahan, GFS & the like) when I notice an item I've never seen before: Fender "Pure Vintage" part #001-9473-049. It looks like someone figured it out & these blocks have the shallow holes.
Has anyone else seen these? Do you know if this is a recent development? Are they stock on reissues or just Custom Shop guitars?