chris77
This might be old news to those in the know or those who read last month's Guitarist magazine. I however only read about it this weekend and I thought it was damn interesting, so I thought I'd share ?
It is basically an article about the first Vintage Reissues that Fender did in the early eighties and Dan smiths recollections of that time. Here are some of my favourite parts that I hadn't known about before:
1) By the late seventies/early eighties Fender's best selling model was the Black strat. Not because it was particularly popular, but because it was sometimes the only colour dealers could get. Whenever there was a flaw on a new guitar it would be painted black to cover it up and shipped anyways.
2) The first Vintage Reissues were not decided upon how well regarded those years instruments was, but by a variety of other factors. For instance, they wanted a rosewood and maple neck strat - so that meant one out of the 50's and one fom the early 60's. They chose '57 because the year was a strong one in the US automotive industry and folks fondly remembered cars from that year ( '57 Chevy, '57 Oldsmobile etc) so hopefully they would do the same with the guitars. 1963 was the year Kennedy was shot and stood out in most Americans minds as a bad year. The years after weren't happy ones either, but before was a bit of a golden era- so a '62 strat then.
3)When they decided to reissue these years they had no points of reference to work from. Fender kept no records or plans of their guitars pre-CBS, no templates, no nothing. They didn't even have any guitars from those years to work with....
4) ....so they headed out to a dealer who stocked a lot of vintage guitars and kindly asked him if they could take some measurements of the guitars. They bought a couple but in some cases they couldn't find the exact year's model so chose a model closest to it. The '62 strat was based on a 1960 model.
Anybody else know of any interesting stories about makers?
AlanRatcliffe
- when they first moved back to the small Strat headstock in '79, they got it wrong and made it too small. Look at the "The STRAT"
- the main reason Leo changed fingerboards to rosewood in the 60's was on black and white TV he couldn't see white player's fingers on maple boards.
vic
Thanks Chris !
Sometimes I'm rendered speechless about the lack of good record keeping and lack of authentic specimens to work from. This goes for Gibson as well. Jeepers guys... the Custom shop at Gibson is STILL trying to get the R9's specs true to the real thing of 1959. Can you imagine that ! ? Every year they announce a "new little thing" or change that has been corrected and added to their VOS-Historic series...I mean c'mon !
And I was thinking Fender is/was so much better organized...LOL !
