Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/zE2EMV4DXX8

Check out our full range of Fender Custom Shop guitars here: https://guitarvillage.co.uk/categories/guitars/electric-guitars/fender-electric-guitars/custom-shop

Full range of Fender guitars here: https://guitarvillage.co.uk/categories/guitars/electric-guitars/fender-electric-guitars

Full Transcript

Guitar Village here and today to celebrate the 30th anniversary of our partnership with the Fender Custom Shop we thought we’d do the special showcase presentation we’ve got a few classic guitars ones that we’ve worked with customers over the years and once we think you’ll really like to check out as well and do stick around to the end because we’ve got one really really special guitar too to show you okay so when we think of Fender Custom Shop typically I guess we we all expect to see like a heavy Relic guitar and you know back in the in the 90s really the early 90s anyway you wouldn’t really have seen relics coming from Fender it was only until 95 that they launched them with the help of Vince Cuneta who did a lot of their aging out of house initially when people saw them I think a lot of the dealers looked at them and kind of turned their nose up at them but a lot instantly realized that these things were going to be successful so they got involved now what happened is after Vince canetto was relocking these guitars with his team they did them out of the house they got sent yeah box kits from Fender they would Age them then send all these parts back and Fender would assemble them to final setups fret dresses that kind of stuff it wasn’t until 98.99 that Mike Eldred took over the custom shop and decided that they’re actually going to bring all of this relicing process back in house and they streamlined it too they came up with three distinct Reddit levels they had NOS which is basically like a new guitar then they went for closet classic which is really designed to be like a guitar that was bought new and generally has been stored in the case for like 60 years and then the Relic which isn’t too dissimilar from this journeyman Relic I’m holding here it wasn’t until maybe the mid-noughties that they came up with these like really distressed heavy Relic and super heavy Relic finishes and the rest I guess is history today you can order almost anything you can imagine within the fender range through the custom shop you can decide what model you want who you want to build it you can have Team built you can have Masterbuilt you can even choose the master builder you know you can choose your Relic level you can choose spec you know down to fret y you can choose fretboard radius clay dots you can have Pearl dots your type of pickups you want you know everything from Plastics finish the whole package the first model I want you to check out today is this this is a 59 reissue Strat it’s in a super faded age Fiesta red finish it’s got an older body being a 59 model you’re going to have a rosewood fretboard with a maple neck and this one is one of the flat laminated Rosewood fretboards so what they do here is the top of the maple work contacts the Rosewood is flat and then the Rosewood veneer that goes on top is also flat underneath as well so you would typically call that a slab board it has clay dots which we all love for the pre-cbs period a three-ply mint green guard and a trio of hand wound fat 50s pickups [Applause] [Music]

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okay so when people talk about Black Guard blonde Tellies this is exactly what they mean it’s an early 50s Telly in this case this is a 53 reissue what you get is a blonde finish with a black pick card you also get an ash body which is very different to the order that we saw on that strap it’s got a lot more grain to it it can be heavier than order it also can be a lot lighter as well [Music] you get a chunky one-piece Maple neck so no Rosewood veneer laminate whatever you want to call it on top they’ve gone for a compound radius on this so what that means is that low down on the fingerboard it’s a seven and a quarter inch curve on there and as you come up the fingerboard it gets to a nine and a half they’ve even added some 6105 Frets to make this really really playable in the bridge position we’ve got a hand weld original Black Guard tele pickup and in the neck there’s a twisted telly

[Music] okay so we’re jumping back into Strack country with this super heavy Relic finish 50s guitar now this is a really quirky one so we’ve got an ash body which typically with straps you wouldn’t see anywhere past 1956 or at least mid 56. however it’s got a three color Sunburst finish which you wouldn’t really see anywhere before 58. other cool features on this it has a roasted AAA flame Maple neck it’s one piece just like we were seeing on the Telly then but to make this a really really modern guitar you’ve got a 12 inch fretboard radius with 6100 jumbo fret wire now to top that off it’s also got some Josephina ham wound 50s pickups and Josephina has been wanting pickups for a long time with Fender but most importantly she was The Apprentice to abigailabara who hand wow pickups for Fender since the 50s [Music] oh

we’re going to check out is this 1960 reissue so very different from the 53 reissue we’re checking out this one is not called a Black Guard blonde because it doesn’t have a black pickguard so we’ve gone for a single ply white Pickard on here it’s still got a translucent finish uh it’s an ash body still [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] it’s got a rift sawn Maple neck with a Rosewood slab board on there with Clay dots now riffs or necks are very interesting so there’s three types of necks that Fender do or at least three types of cuts for the next so you have plain sawn which is the cheapest then you have chords on which has lots of medary rays and there’s a little bit more stable and then riffs on which Fender say is the most stable cut you can get it’s also got a 60 style oval C profile which is absolutely the most popular neck that the custom shop do for us we’ve got two hand wound Texas special tele pickups in there and to make this even more playable they have added 6105 Frets and a nine and a half inch radius [Applause] [Music]

[Music] right so now we are back onto the strats and we’re checking out this 56 reissue this one is a little bit more typical of what I would expect to see you know for a late 56 Strat so we have an older body and it has a one piece riffs on Maple neck it’s quite a chunky 1056 v-neck as well which makes the whole thing really vibrant and kind of throaty sounding

thank you

[Music] now speaking of tones this actually has three hand wound bone tone pickups in there which sound incredible definitely if you haven’t heard them yet check them out to make it even more playable what they’ve done is they’ve added a nine and a half inch radius fretboard instead of the typical vintage correct seven and a quarter and 6105 Frets too [Music]

okay so any fan of Keith Richards will notice this as being a macawber Telecaster it’s a 51 reissue with a Seymour Duncan 59 in the neck and in the bridge position you’ve got a crushed black guard tele pickup what Fender have done on this one they’ve done their fancy HS stacked pots in here so they’ve got 250 and 500k pots under each control which means you get the best out of each pickup [Music]

it’s got a chunky 1056v which we absolutely love at the shop it’s got a compound radius fretboard as well so it goes from seven and a quarter up to nine and a half making it really nice on the hands for chord work especially if you put your thumb over the top and actually when you get up to the top it’s really nice for lead playing too oh

so there’s the six guitars I wanted to present to you today but I did promise you one special one so let’s grab it out so this was a guitar that was actually released back in 1999 by the Fender Custom Shop they didn’t release all of them to the dealers they actually went to some of the bosses and dealerships for Jaguar so here it is they only made 25 of these this one is number 12. let’s go and check it out [Music] so this is as I said earlier a very special guitar and when you look at some of the details on it it’s absolutely incredible as you can tell instantly it’s very recognizable with the British racing green you’ve got Bell Walnut that was actually sourced from the same suppliers that’s awesome for Jaguar the Connolly gig bag that you would have seen earlier is from the same leather supplies that Jaguar use for their Upholstery and the fretboard is inlay with 18 karat gold as well as I said earlier this is a really special exclusive guitar that was originally built by Stephen Stern to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Jaguar XK engine we’ve had such a great relationship working with the custom shop over the last 30 years they bought out some absolutely Timeless Classics and it’s been great getting to know people who are really enthusiastic about the custom shop models too if you want to find out anything about any of the guitars we’ve shown off today all the links will be in the description and the full range of our Custom Shop is on the website as well as always thanks for watching