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拍品專文
THE FENDER CUSTOM SHOP
Following a slow downward spiral in market share driven by declining quality and overseas competition, CBS-owned Fender Electric Instruments was sold to a group of investors headed by then Fender president William Schultz. The year was 1985 and it would mark the third incarnation of Fender with the name change to The Fender Musical Instrument Corporation. Shultz recognised the inherent value in both Fender's rich history and strong brand. He also understood the skill of its workforce which had been squandered over the years. Instilling a corporate ethos of quality over quantity, one of his first steps was to begin building a new manufacturing facility in Corona, California leaving the Fullerton real estate for CBS to liquidate.
For years the C.F. Martin Company in Nazareth, Pennsylvania had been running a successful division known as the Martin Custom Shop. Though Fender had previously dabbled in custom orders it was a facet to the Fender business plan that CBS did not support. Schultz and his team had recognised the folly in this. In early 1987 they carved out 850 square feet of workshop space from the 14,000 sq. ft. Corona factory. With the skilled guitar maker George Blanch in Fender's R&D department, the Fender Custom Shop was headed by the highly esteemed Texas luthier Michael Stevens and nine-year Fender veteran John Page. The expectation was that these craftsmen would produce five to six special order guitars a month. The first examples released to market garnered rave reviews and by June of 1987 the Custom Shop was flooded with orders for 600 guitars in three months. By the beginning of 1988 the shop had expanded to 4500 sq. ft. and the image of Fender guitars became increasingly positive. Staffing the shop's needs grew and talent would be culled from those on the production facility floor who showed skill and exceptional aptitude.
The list of exceptional craftsmen who went through the Custom Shop reads like a who’s who of American electric guitar lutherie. George Blanda, J.W. Black, Larry Brooks, John Suhr, Todd English, Fred Stuart, Yasuhko Iwanade, and Todd Krause, are but a few of the Fender Master Builders whose skills have indelibly marked the success of The Fender Custom Shop.
One brilliant aspect within the structure of the Custom Shop was to link this well of expertise with Fender's R&D department. It allowed an unfettered dialogue between these two teams that then fed their knowledge and expertise directly onto the shop floor of Fender's production facilities. This process became especially useful when producing Fender's highly successful line of ‘Artist Signature Series’ guitars.
The bespoke approach to building an electric guitar for a specific artist led to extraordinary outcomes which infiltrated the greater marketplace. Fender Master Builders would dissect a performer's favoured instrument. By listening closely to what worked and what did not for the artists, they would employ old, sometimes forgotten methods, alongside new techniques and materials. The goal was quality and to keep the process current with guitar players in the market. The concerted endeavours of the Custom Shop were not to produce a bench copy of say Eric Clapton's ‘Blackie’, but instead to embrace all aspects the artist revered about a specific instrument, then produce a new model that fulfilled their needs.
In February 1986 Jeff Beck, along with other celebrated musicians including Eric Clapton, Hank Marvin, David Gilmour and Gary Moore attended a presentation by Fender at the Hilton Hotel in London. The group of musicians were met by Fender associates Bill Shultz and Dan Smith and were presented with the idea of creating artist signature series guitars. Whilst Beck was reluctant to have his signature on a guitar, he needed an additional instrument for his upcoming tour of Japan and Fender supplied him with a new guitar - finished in bright 'Graffiti Yellow' - a '62 Reissue Stratocaster with an oversized neck, fitted with an American Standard Tremolo, and an eleven-screw white pickguard. Over the following two years, George Blanda and the team at the Fender Custom Shop worked with Beck in an effort to develop what they hoped would become a Jeff Beck Signature Series, with various modifications made to neck size, fretboard, frets, bridge, nut and tuners. The resulting instrument was used to tour Beck's 1989 album Guitar Shop, and can be seen in promotional photographs of Beck and his fellow band members Tony Hymas and Terry Bozzio. Following the 1989 tour to Japan, the project was shelved - and the guitar became the basis of the Strat Plus model.
This guitar was one of three prototypes made by former Fender Custom Shop Founder Master Builder J.W. Black for Jeff Beck in March 1990, perhaps in an attempt to pin down the neck size and shape he preferred for the newly reignited Jeff Beck Signature series project. Black supplied it at the same time as two other complete guitars - #01 being a purple guitar and #03 painted with custom graphics by Pamelina Hovnatanian of Beck's red coupe and inscribed 'Deuce Mania' - and a fourth prototype neck only numbered #04 (see the footnote to lot 64). This guitar became the main spare to his no. 1 Strat during the nineties, a Surf Green instrument which would become known as ‘Little Richard’ thanks to the signature carved into the curved contour of the bass side.
Toured extensively as the back-up for 'Little Richard', this guitar shows plenty of playing wear to the pickguard. In 1995, coinciding with a particularly bad break suffered by the main guitar, a new set of pickups were delivered for both the main and this guitar. These were a set of stacked single coils developed by John Suhr, who was the original pickup designer for the Fender Custom Shop. Suhr clarified the creation history of Beck’s favourite pickups: ‘It was a dare from J Black who was re- working Beck’s 3 main guitars and was having some feedback issues with them. So J asks if I could make something and I said I would give it a go! They are stacks and are very tall (under the pickguard), definitely flat pole pieces flush with the cover or close to that. 100% handmade pickups, bobbins and all and the used stock covers. They are dark sounding and warm which really worked for the gain and brilliance of the amps he was using making a brittle overdrive sound fat and smooth. Bill Turner then came on board and Bill Lawrence shortly after was doing some more work for Fender. Then I left. After the Fender Noiseless series was created Beck wanted something more like the prototype sets I built for him and Bill Turner used the existing new noiseless bobbins to come come up with something hotter as a Jeff model pickup, at that point I had one foot out the door. I had assumed Beck had switched to those but later found out that Beck was still using two of the original sets for special occasions loaded into a pickguards he used for special shows and recording. I might make some pickups like the original Beck sets but the guitar would need deeper cavities if I were to do it exactly the same, so it wouldn't be easy to market. These pickups have a unique character and even though stratty they are pretty far away from an authentic single coil tone.’
When 'Little Richard' was finally retired from use in late 1998, so was this guitar, Beck having moved on to the Olympic White Stratocasters for which he became so well-known in the latter part of his career. It has remained in Jeff Beck's home studio in Sussex ever since.
Following a slow downward spiral in market share driven by declining quality and overseas competition, CBS-owned Fender Electric Instruments was sold to a group of investors headed by then Fender president William Schultz. The year was 1985 and it would mark the third incarnation of Fender with the name change to The Fender Musical Instrument Corporation. Shultz recognised the inherent value in both Fender's rich history and strong brand. He also understood the skill of its workforce which had been squandered over the years. Instilling a corporate ethos of quality over quantity, one of his first steps was to begin building a new manufacturing facility in Corona, California leaving the Fullerton real estate for CBS to liquidate.
For years the C.F. Martin Company in Nazareth, Pennsylvania had been running a successful division known as the Martin Custom Shop. Though Fender had previously dabbled in custom orders it was a facet to the Fender business plan that CBS did not support. Schultz and his team had recognised the folly in this. In early 1987 they carved out 850 square feet of workshop space from the 14,000 sq. ft. Corona factory. With the skilled guitar maker George Blanch in Fender's R&D department, the Fender Custom Shop was headed by the highly esteemed Texas luthier Michael Stevens and nine-year Fender veteran John Page. The expectation was that these craftsmen would produce five to six special order guitars a month. The first examples released to market garnered rave reviews and by June of 1987 the Custom Shop was flooded with orders for 600 guitars in three months. By the beginning of 1988 the shop had expanded to 4500 sq. ft. and the image of Fender guitars became increasingly positive. Staffing the shop's needs grew and talent would be culled from those on the production facility floor who showed skill and exceptional aptitude.
The list of exceptional craftsmen who went through the Custom Shop reads like a who’s who of American electric guitar lutherie. George Blanda, J.W. Black, Larry Brooks, John Suhr, Todd English, Fred Stuart, Yasuhko Iwanade, and Todd Krause, are but a few of the Fender Master Builders whose skills have indelibly marked the success of The Fender Custom Shop.
One brilliant aspect within the structure of the Custom Shop was to link this well of expertise with Fender's R&D department. It allowed an unfettered dialogue between these two teams that then fed their knowledge and expertise directly onto the shop floor of Fender's production facilities. This process became especially useful when producing Fender's highly successful line of ‘Artist Signature Series’ guitars.
The bespoke approach to building an electric guitar for a specific artist led to extraordinary outcomes which infiltrated the greater marketplace. Fender Master Builders would dissect a performer's favoured instrument. By listening closely to what worked and what did not for the artists, they would employ old, sometimes forgotten methods, alongside new techniques and materials. The goal was quality and to keep the process current with guitar players in the market. The concerted endeavours of the Custom Shop were not to produce a bench copy of say Eric Clapton's ‘Blackie’, but instead to embrace all aspects the artist revered about a specific instrument, then produce a new model that fulfilled their needs.
In February 1986 Jeff Beck, along with other celebrated musicians including Eric Clapton, Hank Marvin, David Gilmour and Gary Moore attended a presentation by Fender at the Hilton Hotel in London. The group of musicians were met by Fender associates Bill Shultz and Dan Smith and were presented with the idea of creating artist signature series guitars. Whilst Beck was reluctant to have his signature on a guitar, he needed an additional instrument for his upcoming tour of Japan and Fender supplied him with a new guitar - finished in bright 'Graffiti Yellow' - a '62 Reissue Stratocaster with an oversized neck, fitted with an American Standard Tremolo, and an eleven-screw white pickguard. Over the following two years, George Blanda and the team at the Fender Custom Shop worked with Beck in an effort to develop what they hoped would become a Jeff Beck Signature Series, with various modifications made to neck size, fretboard, frets, bridge, nut and tuners. The resulting instrument was used to tour Beck's 1989 album Guitar Shop, and can be seen in promotional photographs of Beck and his fellow band members Tony Hymas and Terry Bozzio. Following the 1989 tour to Japan, the project was shelved - and the guitar became the basis of the Strat Plus model.
This guitar was one of three prototypes made by former Fender Custom Shop Founder Master Builder J.W. Black for Jeff Beck in March 1990, perhaps in an attempt to pin down the neck size and shape he preferred for the newly reignited Jeff Beck Signature series project. Black supplied it at the same time as two other complete guitars - #01 being a purple guitar and #03 painted with custom graphics by Pamelina Hovnatanian of Beck's red coupe and inscribed 'Deuce Mania' - and a fourth prototype neck only numbered #04 (see the footnote to lot 64). This guitar became the main spare to his no. 1 Strat during the nineties, a Surf Green instrument which would become known as ‘Little Richard’ thanks to the signature carved into the curved contour of the bass side.
Toured extensively as the back-up for 'Little Richard', this guitar shows plenty of playing wear to the pickguard. In 1995, coinciding with a particularly bad break suffered by the main guitar, a new set of pickups were delivered for both the main and this guitar. These were a set of stacked single coils developed by John Suhr, who was the original pickup designer for the Fender Custom Shop. Suhr clarified the creation history of Beck’s favourite pickups: ‘It was a dare from J Black who was re- working Beck’s 3 main guitars and was having some feedback issues with them. So J asks if I could make something and I said I would give it a go! They are stacks and are very tall (under the pickguard), definitely flat pole pieces flush with the cover or close to that. 100% handmade pickups, bobbins and all and the used stock covers. They are dark sounding and warm which really worked for the gain and brilliance of the amps he was using making a brittle overdrive sound fat and smooth. Bill Turner then came on board and Bill Lawrence shortly after was doing some more work for Fender. Then I left. After the Fender Noiseless series was created Beck wanted something more like the prototype sets I built for him and Bill Turner used the existing new noiseless bobbins to come come up with something hotter as a Jeff model pickup, at that point I had one foot out the door. I had assumed Beck had switched to those but later found out that Beck was still using two of the original sets for special occasions loaded into a pickguards he used for special shows and recording. I might make some pickups like the original Beck sets but the guitar would need deeper cavities if I were to do it exactly the same, so it wouldn't be easy to market. These pickups have a unique character and even though stratty they are pretty far away from an authentic single coil tone.’
When 'Little Richard' was finally retired from use in late 1998, so was this guitar, Beck having moved on to the Olympic White Stratocasters for which he became so well-known in the latter part of his career. It has remained in Jeff Beck's home studio in Sussex ever since.