February 03, 2004
The Creation of a Fender Custom Shop Master Built Instrument
by Tom Watson
I have written about the "Master Built Experience" before, detailing the process from the point of view of the customer, the builder and a Master Dealer. Today, the News Desk is pleased to announce a new feature that will allow readers to follow another Master Built experience, this time, literally, from day one.
Link to the "La Claudette" journal:
"La Claudette" - The Creation of a Fender Custom Shop Master Built Instrument
Guitar collector Michael Perry has decided to commission a Master Built instrument to be part of his collection, and to serve as a tribute to his wife, Claudette. The Perrys have agreed to let Strat Collector News Desk readers follow the experience, virtually as it occurs, through the online journal that can be reached from the link above.
Background
I have known Mike Perry for several years. We first met when I sold him a 1979 Strat through eBay. He returned the guitar to me and I refunded his money. I had had the guitar refretted with jumbo frets (my personal preference) that were not to his liking. We kept in touch, and over the next few years exchanged a large number of emails about guitars.
Although Mike's original interest was in vintage Strats, he became more and more attracted to non-vintage collectibles, especially significant pieces with low serial numbers. Today, the core of Mike's collection contains only six instruments, but guitars that in his opinion, and mine, are meaningful with respect to late CBS and post-CBS Fender history. They fall into one of three categories: anniversary models, early Fender Custom Shop, or Fender Custom Shop Art Guitars.
The Custom Shop "PROUD" Stratocaster, based on the GuitarMania instrument, was the Art Guitar representative in his collection. Mike has now decided to have the Custom Shop build an Art Guitar according to his specifications. The journal provides more detail about his motivation.
An experiment in "new journalism"
The publishing opportunities afforded by the Internet have changed the face of traditional text-based journalism. They allow us to follow a story very nearly as it happens, and to get a true behind-the-scenes point of view from a current and ongoing perspective. Stories can also be interactive, allowing readers the opportunity to comment and question - to communicate with the story's participants. But not always without complications . . .
There's an element of risk involved in publishing an ongoing story whose outcome is unknown. Anything's possible. One or more participants could turn sour, the project could be abandoned, there may be extended periods of time with "no news", interactive journals create the possibility of malicious comments and spamming, there's no guarantee that the journal participants will have the time or inclination to respond to readers' comments or questions . . . All of these and a host of other potential problems could come to pass.
On the other hand, uncertainty and risk help make a story interesting.
Guitars as Art and Art Guitars
There is nothing new about a guitar being considered a work of art. For over a hundred years, guitars and their near-relatives have often been seen as worthy of appreciation due to the beauty of their craftsmanship. Institutions such as New York's Museum of Modern Art (The Guitar Is Art, Rhythms of Art and Design in the 20th Centruy) and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts (Dangerous Curves:Art of the Guitar) have held important exhibitions featuring the art of the guitar. Guitars have even made an appearance at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of American History (Blue, Blue, Blue Guitars).
There's an important distinction, though, between historical guitars, whose craftsmanship attains the artistic, and contemporary Art Guitars. The former were primarily instruments intended to be played that happened to be blessed with beauty. The latter were, and are, designed to be "beautiful", in most cases with no intention of ever serving as a player's instrument. Contemporary Art Guitars are made to be visually attractive, and thus, hopefully, collectible, while older instruments now regarded as "beautiful" (and collectible) were built for the purpose of making music.
This distinction is important to some in the guitar-collecting community, especially to those with a more "traditional" outlook. To many collectors, enthusiasts and players, a guitar should be valued primarily on the basis of its functionality - its playability and tonal qualities - rather than as a work of art. To those with this point of view, an Art Guitar created solely to serve as eye candy may have limited appeal.
The importance of this distinction, however, melts away in the view of the non-playing public, whose only interaction with the instruments is visual. Like them or not, Art Guitars receive considerable attention as stand-alone pieces of visual communication - artwork. Nor has an exclusive focus on visual appeal been lost on at least one major collector.
In the nineties, the late Scott Chinery, one of the world's best-known and respected guitar collectors, commissioned twenty-two highly regarded archtop-guitar luthiers to have each one build an instrument based on the color blue. And not just any "blue". He sent each of them a bottle of Ultra Blue Penetrating Stain #M 520 to be used in the finish. The twenty-two guitars produced are known as "The Blue Guitars" and have been the subject of important exhibitions (see above) and a book (Blue Guitar, by Ken Vose et al.).
I hope that those in the guitar community who lean more toward function than form will, nevertheless, enjoy the "La Claudette" experiment. Very few of us, myself included, have the financial means of a Scott Chinery, and, while a Fender Custom Shop Master Built one-off most likely won't cost as much as one of Chinery's Blue Guitars, it's still out of the reach of most, again, myself included. However, being unable to afford a single thing to be found in any major art museum has never stopped me from enjoying the pieces on display.
There are those, too, who look at the contemporary Art Guitars produced by companies such as Fender, Gibson and PRS as more of a commercial-marketing gimmick than as a sincere attempt at artistic expression. Hopefully, articles such as the Master Built Experience, the Koicaster, the Surf Guitars, the SRV Tribute Stratocaster, and the La Claudette journal will give such individuals a glimpse at just how serious and sincere the artists involved are. If still unimpressed after reading these articles, I hope we can agree, to paraphrase Mark Twain, that it's the difference of opinion that makes a horse race interesting.
Final note
The Strat Collector News Desk is lucky to enjoy the services of professional copy editor (and axe evangelist - DW) David Watkins, who helps try to ensure that the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed with respect to our articles. The La Claudette journal, however, falls beyond the scope of what David does for the News Desk, so any spelling, punctuation, grammar or related errors that may appear on the La Claudette journal are solely my doing (or lack thereof), not his.
Related Articles
A Fender Custom Shop Master Built Experience
GuitarMania and Fender Custom Shop Art Guitars
Fender Custom Shop Surf Guitars
Fender Custom Shop "Custom Koicaster Strat"
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