David Davidson of Well Strung Guitars has owned a lot of oddball axes in his time. Prototypes, one-off custom orders, tradeshow builds, movie prop guitars, employee instruments…you name it, he’s seen it.

Among such rarities is this uncataloged sparkle-finish guitar from the mid '60s.  

“This is a 1966 Mosrite six-string bass,” begins David. “Up at the top of the fretboard near the body where they put their serial numbers it says ‘6 001.’ ‘6’ indicates the model year, but ‘001’? I don’t know how many six-string basses Mosrite made, but they’re not in the catalog. And there are no markings on it anywhere that indicate a model name. I’ve never seen another one like it.”

Impressed by its unique design, David acquired the instrument while considering if he’d ever see the likes of it again. You snooze you lose, as the saying goes, so he decided to pull the trigger before it got away. As he recalls: “I bought this guitar several years ago from another dealer here in the United States because I said to myself, ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever see another one of these things again.’ It wasn’t very costly, and it had the original brown Mosrite ’gator case with some original paperwork, which is kind of neat.”

While David has owned a number of vintage Mosrites, they are far from his favorite guitars. “I have to say that I’ve never been a huge fan of the Mosrite company,” he admits. “I realize Semie [Moseley, Mosrite founder] was a forefather of the solidbody electric guitar business and I have to give him credit for his innovations and designs. But this guitar is way out there. I don’t know how far this project went, but I’m sure it was in response to the Fender VI, Gibson EB-6 and Danelectro [UB-2] six-string basses. My feeling is that everyone was jumping on the bandwagon and trying to make something.

“This one has a very deep blue sparkle finish and it has the really cool ‘Bart Simpson’ tuners – they got the name because they look like a profile of the cartoon character Bart Simpson’s head! It’s also got a Mosrite vibrato that actually functions. I mean, it works fairly well. It’s an interesting design, but it’s an absolute rip-off of the spring-loaded Bigsby. The pickup is basically a six-polepiece guitar pickup.”

It may look the part, but this vintage Mosrite also plays like a pro instrument. “The playability is great. Out of all the six-string basses or baritone guitars of this period that I’ve played this is probably second only to the Fender VI. It’s far superior in build and design to the Gibson. There are two versions of the Gibson six-string bass – a semi-hollow version [from 1959] and a solidbody version [from 1961]. The hollowbody looks like an EB-2 [thinline] and the solid version has the typical SG shape. The SG-style ones tend to sound a little farty, and the earlier ones are also rather odd and cumbersome. The neck dimensions make them feel weird to play.

“This Mosrite six-string bass, however, plays pretty much like a regular guitar! You can pluck each individual string easily and hear each note clearly, or you can play chords. And the sound projects really well through an amplifier.

So what’s the most obvious differences between this Mosrite and a Fender VI? “The advantage the Fender VI has over it is that it’s got larger frets, whereas the frets on this Mosrite are tiny,” David tells us. “You can even bend strings pretty comfortably on the Fender VI and get some very cool sounds. I always think of Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” when I think of the VI because of the solo. But another great song featuring a Fender VI is Aerosmith’s “Back In The Saddle” – that’s certainly one of the most emotional sounds I’ve ever heard come out of a baritone electric guitar.

“But I don’t know of any recorded music performed using a Mosrite six-string bass. So I can’t recommend you listen to anything specific. This guitar is really a mystery. It’s virtually unknown. But that’s what got me interested in it to begin with. When I saw it online, I bought it for the Songbirds guitar museum in Chattanooga, Tennessee [David curated the museum’s incredible collection]. I bought it because I thought the museum needed something strange like this. It’s such a cool piece.”

“Just to be completely transparent, I’ve only owned about 10 different Mosrite guitars in my life, so it’s not like there’s been a lot of them. I’ve had a couple of the set-neck ones they made early on that are good. Mosrite certainly had their fans.”

These days, we hear far more about how Fender, Gibson, Epiphone, Rickenbacker and Gretsch played a part in electric guitar history. But Mosrite also played an important role in the early days of the instrument. “Semie Moseley did a good job of getting his guitars out there into the country world,” acknowledges David. “He got his guitars into many people’s hands. There are clips on YouTube of guitarists playing Mosrites at barn dances and even places like the Grand Ole Opry.

“Because of the Ventures models, Mosrites are also associated with surf music. But when this was made in ’66, the surf music era was pretty much over. The surf era really lasted from around 1960 to 1964. Once The Beatles became relevant, it was basically the end of a lot of people’s careers. I hate to diss a company I know has a big fanbase, but I just never really got the whole Mosrite thing. But I’ll say more positive things about this guitar than any [Mosrite] Ventures guitar I’ve played. I don’t think I’ve ever advertised it before. Then again, I don’t know who would be interested in it!

“Regardless, it’s an honor for me to own something this weird.”

Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson co-owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York

info@wellstrungguitars.com / 001 (516) 221-0563

The Dreadnought was originally developed by Martin in the earlier part of the 20th century when steel strings were becoming increasingly popular and Hawaiian music was all the rage. Hawaiian musician Mekia Kealakaʻi played a crucial role in the Dreadnought’s birth in 1916 when he received his custom-built instrument, and the design entered production the same year as exclusive models, namely the D-111 and D-222, for retailer Ditson.

Following the demise of Ditson, Martin started marketing the Dreadnought under its own brand in 1931. But the now iconic Martin Dreadnought really came into its own in 1934 when it changed from a 12- to 14-fret neck design.

Finally, 100 years after Martin made its first guitar on U.S. soil, the archetypal American flat-top had arrived.

When America entered the Second World War following the December 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, guitar production was suddenly and irrevocably altered due to the war effort and materials shortages. Hence, pre-war Martin acoustics are among the most collectible flat-tops in the world.

David Davidson of Well Strung Guitars recently showed us this stunning example from the pre-war era.

“This is a 1936 Martin D-18 with a shaded top – probably the cleanest one in the world,” he tells us. “Shipping records show they shipped two shaded top guitars in ’36. The Martin ledger goes all the way back to before the American Civil War, which is pretty amazing.

“It’s possible that not all ‘dark tops’, as they were referred to in the Martin catalog, were recorded being shipped as such, and some collectors estimate the figures to be higher. Even so, there aren’t many out there.”

Pre-war Martins are regarded by collectors and players as some of the best flat-tops money can buy. “In my mind, this is the pinnacle of a great-sounding Martin,” agrees David. “Purists will sing the praises of ‘30s Martins, but I’ve had a lot from the ‘40s and ‘50s that sound great as well.

“The look of this guitar is beyond belief, but it sounds incredible, too. I don’t do as much with acoustic guitars as I do electrics, but I’m pretty familiar with them and I can tell you that when it comes to these pre-war Martins, they’re very desirable.”

And when it comes to investing in a vintage piece, these instruments have a strong track record. “Even during the recession from 2008 to 2012, they never seemed to lose a dime,” recalls David. “While electric guitars were struggling, acoustics were generally doing well. This one happens to be a really amazing piece, and it has all the good things people look for, including forward-shifted, scalloped X-bracing.”

While we’re used to seeing sunburst Gibson acoustics, such finishes are far less common with respect to vintage Martins. “The sunburst on a Martin is unique,” says David. “It looks different to the sunburst on a Gibson flat-top. These guitars were made as a direct response to Gibson making sunburst flat-tops; they had a little competition going on. In fact, the whole thing is rooted in – often unspoken – competition.

“I’m sure they saw each other’s products at the trade shows in the 1930s and, presumably, Martin thought they might be losing some market share if they didn’t do a sunburst guitar. It’s called a ‘dark top’ in the catalog, although people tend to call it a shade top or shaded top.”

Finish aside, the shape and size of a guitar is crucial with respect to its look, not to mention its feel and tone. “Gibson had their Jumbos, which are often called dreadnoughts, too, but these larger guitars aren’t comfortable for every kind of guitarist,” points out David. “Alternatively, 000-sized Martins can fit a player’s body better.

“Because of the way the guitar is shaped, it sits lower on your thigh, and the [lower bass bout] feels significantly smaller against the forearm. I think that’s why the 000 guitars were so popular with female players and/or those of smaller stature.”

According to David, the Martin Dreadnought (originally spelled Dreadnaught) was developed for enhanced volume and fullness of tone. However, the difference in sound between Martin D- and 000-designated instruments may be less obvious than some people think.

Explains David: “The Dreadnought was made to be played standing up. It was made bigger and louder so that players back in the day – be it in a church group, an outdoor singalong or whatever – had a guitar that was able to project when standing. Nevertheless, a lot of players ended up playing them sat down.

“You get more bottom-end with a Dreadnought than you do a 000. There’s not a dramatic difference between them, but I think there is a dramatic difference between a 000 and 00 or 0. There’s significantly less low-end with the smaller 00 and 0; that’s another reason why I think a lot of people prefer 000s. Not only do they fit better and are easier to play both sitting down and standing up, but the sound is rich and full. I mean, either is wonderful.”

Although many notable guitarists have used 18-series Martins, these guitars were (and remain) relatively affordable.

“An 18-series guitar is nowhere near the top of the line,” highlights David. “It was one of the lower Martin guitar styles made at that time – the 28-series was considered the midline – and there wasn’t a huge difference in price between a D-18 and 000-18. It was really about which was the more comfortable of the two.”

“People like the 18s for recording, particularly fingerstyle. If you use an 18 – which is generally a brighter guitar than a 28 – for fingerstyle, it can balance out nicely. It can sound more subdued playing fingerstyle on a 28 because they’re less bright, but they often sound better using a plectrum. A plectrum is going to make any guitar sound brighter than your fingers because it’s a harder material.

“D-28s are associated with bluegrass, but you can use one to play just about anything. Same with a D-18. It really comes down to how you decide to play them. Dreadnoughts can be bigger and boomier if you strum them a certain way. You can get a lot out of them if you want it. Or they can be very subtle when gently picked.”

Throughout the decades, Martin acoustics have remained workhorse instruments with a reputation for quality and consistency, although some extra care may be required in colder regions. “I’ve rarely come across an early Martin Dreadnought I didn’t like,” says David. “The only times they’ve not been that great have been when there were tons of repairs – too many cleats stopping the good vibrations of the soundboard.

“But they can be treacherous to own, especially in cold, dry climates. That’s when you really have to give them a lot of care and feeding. The only guitars I’ve seen that seem to do well in virtually all climates are made of maple. Maple rarely cracks.”

Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York.

info@wellstrungguitars.com / 001 (516) 221-0563

The guitar you see here is a Gibson Double 12. Appearing as a custom-order instrument from 1957 alongside the Double Mandolin with Sunburst, Solid White and Solid Black finish options, this unique electric model features a 12-string neck and a 6-string neck. Both mahogany necks have a standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4-inches and sport a bound rosewood fretboard with double-parallelogram inlays.

The semi-hollow Double 12 was constructed with a spruce top and laminated maple sides/back and was superseded by the SG-style EDS-1275 solidbody by 1962. Sporting a solid mahogany body and neck, this double-headed axe was famously wielded by Jimmy Page, Don Felder and Slash.

Shipping records show only 110 Double 12/EDS-1275 models were shipped between 1958 and 1967. However, following its reintroduction in the mid ‘70s, roughly ten times that number were shipped by the end of the decade.

Suffice it to say, early examples are very rare. But then vintage guitar veteran David Davidson specializes in such highly collectible instruments and is down to share some of the coolest guitars from the Well Strung Guitars vault with us.

“This is a pretty neat guitar,” begins David. “I stumbled across it almost by accident, but it has an amazing story. This is a prototype from ’57, with no serial number. It’s an EDS-1275 hollowbody with a spruce top. It has a Polaris White finish and features a six-string neck and a 12-string neck. It has four PAF humbucking pickups and switchable necks. It’s not so much that it’s different from the regular production guitars – more that this is likely the one pictured at the 1957 Chicago NAMM Show.

“The original owner (I bought it from her son) was Jeanette Dixie Lee Fogel, and she was in a band called Dixie Lee and the Rhythm Ramblers. She got to play this double-necked Gibson after her husband backed over her Kay guitar and amplifier with his station wagon. He destroyed the instrument completely, so he went running out looking for a new guitar. This is all documented in letters from two of her sons.

“Dixie Lee was a big fan of The Collins Kids and Joe Maphis and liked the idea of having a double-necked guitar. So they went to order one and were surprised when it showed up at the music store less than a week later. They couldn’t understand how Gibson made it so fast. Normally, it would have taken weeks. We can only conclude the guitar was already made.

“They thought they were going to have a custom-made guitar, and normally it would have taken way longer. But Gibson already had this EDS-1275 Double 12 built. They just needed to box it up and ship it. My reasoning is that after they had it at the NAMM Show, the order came in and they just decided to pack it up and send it out immediately.

“She played with different people like Little Jimmy Dickens, Billy Grammer, Stoney Cooper, Clyde Moody, Leon Rhodes and Larry Collins. So she was a pretty happening player and singer. She passed away in 1968, and after the guitar ended up with her family, they relocated from Charleston, South Carolina, to Nichols, South Carolina. The oldest brother, Harold, had become the caretaker of the instrument, and when his father died the sons made a decision to find the guitar a new home. I remember the phone call.

“They called me in 2016 and told me the story. Harold said, ‘We used to have famous musicians at the house all the time when we were little boys – Joe Maphis and all these other people like Jimmy Bryant. It was a big deal and it’s a special guitar.’ But then he told me there was no serial number on it and I was like, ‘Wow I’ve not seen a 1275 without a serial number.’ But having dealt with a lot of rare guitars I know that many early first-edition Gibsons were not serial numbered. This is because they weren’t sure if they wanted to sell them to the public. Interestingly, 1952 Les Paul Goldtops weren’t serial numbered, either.

“This guitar is in immaculate condition except the tuner buttons had shrunk to virtually nothing. When I got it, I put period-correct repro Kluson tuners on so that it was a usable instrument. The originals are in the case. It has the original case. It looks like an Explorer case – a large, rectangular brown type with a pink lining.

“I’ve seen a lot of double-necks in the past and I have a lot of double-necks now because I built a collection of different types for the Songbirds museum. Now, I have many of them back, although I’ve sold some recently. Slash just bought a black one and the only cherry-red one that was ever made. (He posted it on Instagram, so people can see it on there.) But this guitar is very special, too. I mean, I’ve never seen another one with no serial number, and the pots are dated to the 16th week of 1957. They didn’t introduce this model until 1958, so it’s very, very early. I’ve owned six 1958s and they all had 1958 pots.

“I recently bought a ’59, which has just landed here at Well Strung Guitars. It’s a white one that is pretty beat up, but it’s cool – great vibe. This ’57, however, is super clean. She took incredible care of it. I laughed because when I got it there were four polishing cloths in the case. It’s one of those guitars that plays really well and has been played a lot. But it’s also been well taken care of. Plus, it’s never been tampered with in any way. It didn’t take much to set this up and get it playing. The playability is unbelievable. Both necks play incredibly well. It’s wonderful to see.”

Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson co-owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York
info@wellstrungguitars.com / 001 (516) 221-0563

“I have all the history on this guitar. It’s an interesting story. Back in 1998, the original owner – a guy by the name of Verlin Whitford – sent me photos of it. On the back of a photo, he’d written ‘1951 Tele and original case’ along with his name and phone number. So I called him right away and said, ‘Hey, that’s a cool Telecaster. Can you tell me about it?’

“As it turned out, Verlin and Leo Fender had a close mutual friend, and so he was able to visit the factory in person with the aim of collecting an Esquire he’d ordered. He lived right down the road in Fullerton. When he got there, he was told it wasn’t ready to collect. However, because his buddy was friends with Leo, the two of them were offered a tour of the factory. They walked around and when he was in the amplifier area, Verlin spotted an Esquire painted in sunburst – not the sunburst Tele featured here, although I do also happen to own the Esquire, too!

“When he asked the factory guys about it, they told him they didn’t normally make Esquires or Telecasters in sunburst [blonde was the standard finish] and that it was an experimental build. But Verlin offered to buy it anyway, even though it was something of a test mule. At that point, he asked if it would be possible for them to add a second pickup, making it a dual-pickup Esquire. So he bought it, took it home, played it and loved it.

“A couple of weeks later, Verlin goes back to Fender to collect the regular blonde Esquire that he’d ordered. While he’s at the factory, he decides to have another look around and spots one of the techs working with a gizmo that he’d never seen on a Fender guitar before. It was a Bigsby vibrato. But this one was different because it was made for a Telecaster body, rather than an archtop.

“At the time, the guitar’s neck and body were just raw wood – no paint. The tech told him it was a unit they just got in from Paul Bigsby and that they were trying to figure out how it all went together. So Verlin told one of the Fender guys, ‘If you can paint that guitar in sunburst, I’ll take it!’ They didn’t quite know if the Bigsby was going to work, but Verlin said, ‘If it does work, I’d love to take it to Korea with me.’ They agreed on a deal and several weeks later the guitar was done.

“This guitar is so ancient. The B16 Bigsby is different from any other B16 I’ve ever seen on a Telecaster. It’s got a fixed arm with a really wide spoon handle – giant! It feels very different to play and you can’t move it down. Engineering-wise, it seems kind of weird.

“The pickguard is bespoke in order to accommodate the Bigsby and the bridge plate is gone. There’s a wooden shim in the neck pocket – because the height and angle need to change – but on every other Bigsby Telecaster I’ve ever seen the shim is aluminum. This one is made from ebony and is stamped ‘Bigsby & Company’. It’s the prototype of the B16 Telecaster.

“So Mr Whitford is going off to fight in Korea and wants to take this guitar with him. He engraves his military identification number, social security number and phone number into the Bigsby in case the guitar is lost, or it can get back to his family in the worst-case scenario.

“Interestingly, when I first spoke to Mr Whitford, we could not agree on a price. He wanted $6,500 in 1998 and I told him I couldn’t give him $6,500 because that’s what I’d sell it for. We did not have an agreement. But we did agree prices on the sunburst and blonde Esquires.

"Several weeks later, he brought this Bigsby sunburst Tele out to a guitar show in Pomona, California. He was showing it around trying to get an offer, but nobody bought it. However, about six months later, a gentleman in Pennsylvania answered a classified ad and he was then able to sell it for $10,000.

“Fast forward to about four or five years ago, I got a call from a guy completely out of the blue. He said, ‘I have a very interesting guitar you might like to hear about.’ He goes on to tell me it’s a 1951 Telecaster in sunburst, so I said, ‘And it has a Bigsby?’ Which stopped him dead. He goes, ‘Yes!’ I said, ‘Did you buy it from a guy named Verlin Whitford?’ And he goes, ‘Yes! I guess this might be your second chance to buy it?’

“Suffice to say, I was on my way home with it the next day.”

Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson co-owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York
info@wellstrungguitars.com / 001 (516) 221-0563

At the moment, we have custom color Firebird I, III, V and VII guitars, along with Thunderbird basses.

This is a 1963 reverse Firebird I in Kerry Green.

The earliest Firebirds from 1963 do not have a Firebird insignia on the pickguard; that starts a little later.

Believe it or not, the Firebird I is one of the rarest models. Because there was a small price difference, the Firebird Is kind of got overlooked.

But I happen to think they are the best out of all of them. I mean Clapton played a Firebird I. 

It’s simplistic: a single pickup, no fretboard binding and dot inlays. Some have a stud tailpiece and some have a shorty Maestro Vibrola.

[Gibson president] Ted McCarty hired a guy called Ray Dietrich – one of the artists in a Manhattan firm that assisted Chrysler and General Motors with body-design work – to help design the Firebird.

Dietrich was one of the proponents of the tailfin design on classic cars and he incorporated that into the guitar.

Along with that came a neck-through body construction. The first incarnation used a two-piece neck/body lamination with body wings either side.

After Gibson decided the guitars needed more strength and stability, they started using a five-piece neck-through construction. So, plus the two wings, it became a seven-piece [lamination] altogether.

Firebirds don’t have many inherent problems. But the case was poor. The banjo tuners would sit right on the inside face of the case, so if it fell over there was a good chance of breaking the headstock.

With the reverse design, the way the strings’ length continues after the nut influences the sounds tremendously. And that’s something people like about the tone of these guitars.

The mini-humbucker is unique to the Firebird and features blade magnets, rather than polepieces, underneath the solid cover.

The pickup tends to be somewhat midrange-y, but they are really good blues and rock ’n’ roll guitars. I’ve mostly heard them sounding their best through Marshall tube amps. I don’t really love them through Fender amps, but I do like them through a Marshall.

A lot of metal guys will play them through a Mesa/Boogie or something like that. If you overdrive them, they’re super co-operative, and the playability is great.

All the reverse guitars [manufactured from 1963 to 1965] have the wider neck width of 1 11/16-inch, and also a very full-depth profile.

A lot of people prefer that. In fact, it’s about as close as you can get to the neck profile of a 1959 Les Paul Standard.

Reverse Firebirds were very costly for Gibson to make. And they needed to be a lot more competitive with the cheaper Stratocaster, which forced them to go with the non-reverse design in mid-1965.

The non-reverses were like the new Coke design; it was not a very good idea.

Instead of a neck-through construction, the non-reverse Firebirds have a glued-in neck, and Gibson threw P-90 pickups into the mix.

They still used mini-humbuckers for the V and VII models. But the reverse Firebird I has a single mini-humbucker, while a non-reverse model has two P-90s.

The reverse Firebird III has two mini-humbuckers, while a non-reverse one has three P-90s.

They continued in the catalogue until 1970, but very few were sold after 1967.

People get more excited about Gibson custom colors on something like an SG or Les Paul, but a Firebird I in a custom color is very rare.

It’s the equivalent of a custom color Fender Esquire. They didn’t make a lot of custom color Esquires because it was the cheaper guitar. Same with the Firebird I.

I’ve seen a Firebird I in Kerry Green (this one), a see-through Cherry, and a couple of Cardinal Reds. But that’s all. I’ve seen every color on Firebird III, V and VII guitars.

This could be the only Kerry Green Firebird I Gibson ever made. I also have a III, a V and a VII in Kerry.

But the Firebird I is the rare one. Which makes sense. People wouldn’t normally spend the cash on a custom color finish on a cheaper guitar. For that money, they’re more likely to order a more upmarket model instead.

Same with the Esquire; you could pay $15 for the extra pickup, or you could pay $15 and get it in a [custom] color.

Gibson offered a chart featuring 10 colors. But they also did some that weren’t on the chart. Cherry, Cherry Sunburst and Black, for example, aren’t on the chart. And we have all of those.

The chart listed available colors, but not the special orders. It was standardized, just like Fender’s early ‘60s chart. And it took some inspiration from that.

I guess the Fender equivalent of Kerry Green would be Surf Green.

Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York.

info@ wellstrungguitars.com / 001 (516) 221-0563

When we’re talking about this electric guitar, we really need to talk about its previous owner, Eddie Bertrand.

The instrument surfaced in 2014, shortly after Eddie died in 2012. I searched my records to see who I bought it from and it appears it was acquired from a person up in the Pacific Northwest.

Eddie played with the Bel-Airs until he left and started Eddie & the Showmen who had some surf-rock hits back in the day.

The reason Eddie left the Bel-Airs was because he liked that heavier, wet reverb sound like Dick Dale. They were different camps of surf music.

Eddie started his own band and that’s when he got this guitar – an original Dennis Swiden sparkle finish 1963 Fender Stratocaster. So it’s from the height of the surf-rock era in California.

Dennis was the guy you wanted to paint your sparkle guitar. He got paid $30 per guitar from Fender. And when he would go to the factory to drop off and pick up bodies, he would literally park in George Fullerton’s spot. He was kind of a VIP. He painted many different guitars.

This guitar is quite faded, but it’s basically a silver undercoat with a black ’burst around the edge. There was a copper metal flake put into the paint, which is really the only part of the guitar that still sparkles.

The silver sparkle has gone dead, but there’s a little bit of copper fleck still visible.

Many sparkle finish Fenders are painted over sunburst or over other custom colors.

Interestingly, on the wood underneath the pickguard on this particular guitar are inscribed the words ‘For Sonic Blue’. So I think that the original plan for this body was that it was going to be a Sonic Blue for someone else.

Then they got the special order for a silver sparkle finish. It looks like it was just written in pen; in the right light and at a certain angle you can see it underneath the finish.

There are pictures of Eddie Bertrand playing this guitar, but there is also a picture of him playing a sunburst sparkle Strat. I have that guitar also. It’s a slab-’board from ’61. It’s another Dennis Swiden sparkle finish.

I’ve been through so many of his guitars, I know the tell-tale signs he left behind that make his guitars his and not someone else’s.

He stayed true to form. He sprayed these guitars like a Fender employee; he used a proper paint stick and really did a wonderful job of making them perfect.

The depth of Dennis Swiden’s sparkles are so much better than the others. It’s pretty easy to spot an original, as opposed to an imposter.

There were other sparkle finish guitars that were painted by other people, but his stuff stands out. He’s like the Peter Max or Pablo Picasso of sparkle finish Fender guitars.

Dennis Swiden did the best work and Fender thought so, too.

At some point somebody thought that this guitar belonged to the sax player Larry Robbins, but it appears he may have made the initial purchase for Eddie. Maybe Eddie couldn’t afford it. Who knows?

But there are pictures all over the internet of Eddie playing this guitar with Kathy Marshall and many other heavy surf people. So it’s pretty concrete.

I don’t believe that Larry Robbins played the guitar; it’s likely he was helping out his friend.

The neck is a standard C-shape, but it’s fairly large – like a lot of ’63s it feels kind of chunky. There is some wear to the back of the neck, but it’s not completely worn down, it’s more satin-y feeling. It feels wonderful.

The frets are good and the neck is straight. It plays good all the way up without choking.

It’s got three well-balanced pickups that all come in around 5.5k. To me, it sounds exactly like you would expect a ’63 Strat to sound like.

There haven’t been any modifications or broken solder. It’s just as original as it was to begin with. It has a white Fender case that looks pretty beat up. It looks like it’s been on the road a bit, which matches the story of this guitar perfectly.

Overall, this Strat has got some pretty good wear and tear on it. As a guitar it’s really been loved and played. You can see great evidence of the silver metallic undercoat in the body horn areas and also in the forearm area where it’s worn through the clear and the black.

It’s usually the case that pro-played guitars like this sound and feel really good. That’s why people continued to play them, otherwise they’d just get something else.

I think a really good guitar usually starts off that way.

Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York.

info@ wellstrungguitars.com / 001 (516) 221-0563

This is not a regular Gibson custom color. It’s actually an unknown color – a blue that’s faded to green. There are a couple of small chips where you can see the blue. It’s kind of a Foam Green now. That has a lot to do with the clear lacquer yellowing with age.

It’s got two initials on the bass bout written in old calligraphy style: ‘E.M.’ There’s a backstory to that. It belonged to a Bahamian guy who was considered to be the ‘Mozart of the Bahamas’. He played many instruments, and this was one of them.

It’s a cool piece, a very one-off kind of electric guitar. It’s stereo and has a Varitone, so in that sense it’s a Super 400CES-SV. It’s from 1964 and has a solid spruce top with maple back and sides. Structurally, it’s what you would expect from this era.

And it has the standard issue gold hardware with the engraved tailpiece, reflector cap knobs and celluloid pickguard. But rather than a natural or sunburst finish it’s been painted a unique color.

The neck profile is rather full. It plays very, very well. It’s not a slim taper neck like a 60/’61; it’s more of the full-size neck. The neck has also been painted blue. In fact, the whole thing is blue, aside from the holly headstock veneer and the ebony fingerboard, obviously.

One thing I love about these higher-end archtops is that it appears only the best craftspeople were working on them. Years ago, during a conversation with ex-Gibson employee Mike McGuire, he told me that Gibson had only their best people working on these.

The binding work was one of the most difficult parts of the process. They’ve got to do the front and back of the body, and it’s multiple ply around the fretboard and headstock, so it was a very labor-intensive process.

There’s also considerably more pearl work involved because of the five-piece split diamond headstock inlays and the large split-block fingerboard inlays.

This is such an interesting color – I think of it as ‘Bahamian Blue’. I don’t have a match for it using the paint charts and there is no record of the actual color they used. It just says, ‘Super 400 Varitone special’, in the ledger.

There are times when Gibson put no tint in the clearcoat lacquer, so it would have appeared clear. But it’s cellulose, so just like old celluloid tape and old celluloid photo albums can turn yellow with age, so too does the clearcoat on old guitars.

However, on some colors, the clear was actually tinted to begin with in order to change the appearance of the basecoat. Inverness Green, for example, is really Pelham Blue with a yellow-tinted lacquer. It was certainly cheaper for Gibson to do it that way, rather than using different basecoats.

You see the same kind of yellowing on old Lake Placid Blue Fender guitars. They often go green when they age because, although the color was acrylic/Lucite, the clear was still nitrocellulose and so would be subject to the same kind of ageing – yellowing and so forth.

As we know, Fender later went to a poly. And once they did, you didn’t get that yellowing of the finish any more. It might get smoke-stained, but it wouldn’t yellow from UV light.

In my opinion, the pointed Florentine cutaway is prettier than the round Venetian cutaway. [Super 400s changed to Florentine cutaways in 1960; the Venetian style returned in 1969.]

The rumor has always been the Florentine Super 400s from the early '60s until the late '60s usually have a veneer back and sides – as opposed to the earlier Venetian cut guitar, which have a solid back and sides. I’ve seen veneer-back Super 400s from as early as 1961.

The Florentine cutaway is a cool look that was inherited from the ES-175, which was always a veneer guitar. It just has that rockabilly style. A pointed cutaway on an ES-5 Switchmaster looks amazing, too.

Elvis played a Super 400CES on the NBC ’68 Comeback Special – he borrowed it from Scotty Moore. Many bandleaders played them.

Back in the day, there were three 18-inch-wide guitars: the D’Angelico New Yorker, the Stromberg Master 400, and the Gibson Super 400. The big three. The D’Angelico was priced a little higher, and the Stromberg was priced way higher.

The Super 400 was Gibson’s top-of-the-line guitar – it was their most expensive and most difficult to make. It had the most accoutrement of any guitar. It was their pinnacle.

You could argue the Citation was fancier, but really the Super 400 is the name that comes to mind when you think about the pinnacle of Gibson.

Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York.

I’ve never seen one before this – or even knew it existed. But there it was in the Gibson ledger from 1969. It’s got the original tags, too. The tags say it’s an all-gold finish, with gold Bigsby, which is pretty cool.

It may have been some kind of presentation piece or a trade show guitar. It’s an unbelievable piece and is in virtually brand-new condition. It plays well, too, and the T-top pickups sound great.

It’s an all-gold finish meaning everything, including the back of the neck, is gold; Goldtop finishes are also self-explanatory.

It has various original paperwork and tags with it, including some that state ‘all-gold, special order, gold Bigsby.’

Somebody had it down previously as a ’68, but there’s no dot in the ‘i’ [of the headstock logo] and the serial number corresponds to early ’69; Gibson repeated ’66 serial numbers in 1969.

It’s a little on the heavier side, as they were – especially with a Bigsby. ’68 and ’69 guitars can be a little weighty, but all in all they’re really cool.

I mean, they were definitely still trying to put out some special pieces in the late '60s. This is a good made-in-the-USA pre-volute electric guitar. Obviously, 1970 is the beginning of the end for a lot of things. But not all guitars that came out of the Norlin era were bad.

Way too many people still believe the fairy tale that they were using '50s wood to build the late-'60s guitars. That simply is not true. There were no leftover '50s bodies made into ’68 Les Pauls. It never happened. I think that’s purely wishful thinking.

Gibson brought the single-cutaway Les Paul back in ’68 due to popular demand. They were pretty dead until Keith Richards went on The Ed Sullivan Show with The Rolling Stones in ’64 playing his ’59 ’Burst.

People’s interests were regenerated, and everyone was making a big hubbub of trading these '50s single-cutaway Les Pauls around. So Gibson decided they weren’t going to sit on the sideline and started making them again.

However, the fact that they reintroduced a P-90 guitar was pretty shocking to me. They could have just put T-top humbuckers in it and had a Les Paul Standard with dual humbuckers and the appointments as a ’57 or ’58 Goldtop. But for whatever reason they liked that ’55/’56 ABR-1/P-90 thing.

At this point, Gibson was a company that didn’t yet fully understand the significance of its own history. There were a few older cats hanging around, but I don’t think there was the same kind of thought process that went into it as nowadays.

Some of the first Les Paul Goldtops that came out in ’68 have an SG-style crown inlay because they didn’t have the Les Paul Model silkscreen logo ready to go in time. I have one of them. They made about 20 or so of those.

In ’69, pretty soon after the reissue P-90 Goldtops came out, they changed to Les Paul Deluxes with mini-humbuckers.

The Les Paul Custom was reintroduced in ’68 as a dual-humbucker guitar, rather than being three-pickup like earlier ones. I think they were listening to people on some level who were complaining they didn’t like the third/middle pickup.

And at that point the two-pickup Les Paul Custom was born – though they did make a very small amount of dual-humbucker guitars in ’57 and ’59.

As the Les Paul Custom kept evolving – or devolving, depending on how you look at it – Gibson continued to come up with some interesting stuff.

I have one from the early ‘70s with a Brazilian rosewood top. And I have one that’s like a tuxedo, a kind of Randy Rhoads creamy white colour on the top, but the sides and back are black. I also have a ’72 in Sparkling Burgundy, which is really nice. So they were trying a few interesting things to woo people back.

Gibson used gold as a basecoat for their Sparkling Burgundy. You’ll often see those guitars fading to a gold-ish colour as the translucent red fades away.

While the finish on this guitar is virtually mint, gold Gibson finishes are known to fade and wear to a greenish hue. The way it was explained to me is there’s a bronze powder in the paint and that’s why they turn the colour they do. 

For every person I meet that doesn’t like a Bigsby I find the person sitting next to them thinks it’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened. They’re wonderful both ways.

I think the naysayers are probably people that just read internet forums and can’t judge a guitar for what it really is. If you play it for a minute, you’ll discover it’s pretty darn good.

Ultimately, it’s the player that makes the guitar.

Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York

info@wellstrungguitars.com
001 (516) 221-0563

This is a 1958/1963 Gibson Explorer. I’ve just come on the heels of delivering Big Ed [a 1958 Gibson Explorer] to Gibson. I delivered it by hand. [Edison] ‘Big Ed’ Thompson was a well-known blues guitarist. In 1958, he and his brother acquired matching guitars – Ed got an Explorer and his brother got a left-handed Flying V, which is one of a kind.

I have it here at Well Strung Guitars. When Big Ed died [in 1993], Rick Vito from Fleetwood Mac bought both guitars and kept them together. They went from Rick Vito to a guy I know, and I bought them as a pair about four and a half years ago. They’ve always stayed together, and I had a deal in place to sell them to a client who wound up only being able to take the V.

Meanwhile, Gibson was waiting in the wings, and they bought the Big Ed Explorer. They flew me out last week to deliver the guitar by hand. It was next to me in a seat all the way there.

While I was in Tennessee, I picked up this Explorer of mine, which I bought from Alan Rogan [guitar tech of Pete Townshend] when he was still alive. It left the factory in 1963 with a 1958 serial number – an ‘8’ prefix followed by four digits.

This, too, is a pretty amazing guitar. It’s 100 per cent original and has never been compromised in any way.

Gibson’s late-50s ‘modernistic’ electric guitars comprised the Futura, the Flying V and the Moderne. But the Moderne never made its way out to the public; at least I have no reason to believe one exists. 

The Futura became the Explorer. It had a narrower waist and they expanded it, while the original split-headstock design was changed to the ‘hockey stick’ profile we see here.

Gibson released the Explorer and Flying V models in ’58, but they had trouble selling them and so they were abandoned by the following year. Later on, they started assembling what they had left just to get rid of them.

They made 19 Explorers in ’58 and a few in ’59. Then in ’63 there were less than a couple dozen more put together, mostly with ’58 serial numbers. Gibson don’t have concrete records of these early '60s Explorers, but it appears they made 22.

The Flying V was formally reintroduced in the late '60s, but the Explorer didn’t reappear until the mid-'70s.

The biggest differences between the original run of late '50s and these early '60s Explorers are that most of the later guitars no longer have gold-plated hardware. And they did away with the six separate tuners in place of specially made six-on-a-strip tuners that don’t fit any other guitar.

People might think, ‘That’s probably a B-25-12 [Gibson 12-string flat-top] set,’ but it’s not. Unfortunately, it was slightly oversized, so they ended up having to grind the end off so it wouldn’t hang over the edge of the headstock.

They also moved the end strap button upwards away from the jack plate, which makes it a little more balanced. Unlike the Flying V, the Explorers aren’t very light guitars; they’re generally around the 8.5lb area. It’s a much more substantial piece of wood.

The neck profile of this guitar is a typical chunky ’58 Gibson profile, and it’s got the smaller frets [larger frets appeared in 1959]. Like the late '50s guitars, this has a korina body.

So, late '50s guitars have gold-plated hardware, but when Gibson got around to getting rid of the rest of the bodies and necks and shipping these guitars out, they used the cheapest components. 

They no longer used the [Kluson] Deluxe tuners; they used the standard strip tuners with white plastic kidney bean buttons like you see on a Les Paul Junior.

Interestingly, the pickguard has one less screw in the pickguard. It’s a three-layer white/black/white plastic ’guard. Also, it has a white switch tip, rather than an antiqued switch tip. Like other Gibsons of the era it has the metal cap ‘reflector’ knobs and nickel-plated hardware with a nylon bridge saddle.

Everything else aside from the body and neck is typically ’63. The pots are dated to ’63 and there are no broken solder joints anywhere in the guitar.

It’s got patent number sticker pickups that have a very biting sound. It’s funny because there were PAF pickups in Big Ed, but this Explorer sounds equally as good. The bridge pickup in Big Ed was maybe a little hotter.

This guitar sounds absolutely amazing when it’s plugged in. To me, an Explorer doesn’t sound like any other guitar. They don’t sound like Les Pauls. It’s somewhat like a Flying V, but it has more bottom-end. They’re thick- and chunky-sounding. I think that’s why a lot of metal players love them. Sure, they look funky, but they also sound deep and rich.

Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York

info@wellstrungguitars.com
001 (516) 221-0563

While Fender seemed to hit it out of the park with the Esquire on its first run, it took Gibson several tries to get to its best guitar. The fact is the first Les Pauls with the trapeze tailpiece had several problems. The neck angle was bad and there was no way to palm[-mute] the strings. In other words, there was no way to play the guitar the way we like to play it.

The way Les liked to play was different, however; he was a jazz guitar picker and he didn’t really palm the strings. It didn’t matter much to him.

Consequently, the guitars from ’52 [when the Les Paul Model/Goldtop was released] to early ’53 are tougher to sell, and many people have used them for conversions to ’Bursts if they happen to have some nice maple underneath [the gold finish].

One of the first things Gibson did as an attempt to improve the design was to incorporate a stud tailpiece in ’53. But even though the stud tailpiece was much more operable than the trapeze, the company hadn’t yet engineered a new [deeper] neck angle. So the guitars that were made through ’53 and up to the early part of ’54 are affected by that. The shallow angle makes the guitars more difficult to play.

Gibson eventually worked out this problem with the neck angle and, by the first quarter of 1954, it started to make what became the first really usable solidbody electric Les Paul. It has a significantly deeper neck angle, and this means that the guitar can play all the way up the fretboard without choking. But Gibson was still addressing certain other things like weight and balance. It took a little while to iron it all out.

The biggest change came in mid-’55 with the introduction of the ABR-1 [Tune-o-matic] bridge. It meant you could now intonate the guitar properly. The guitars were originally sent out with 0.013-gauge strings with a wound G string, but the ABR-1 bridge accommodated a set of 12s with a plain G string. And that made a big difference to players as they could now bend the strings more easily, even though the frets were still a little on the small side.

By ’56, Gibson was nearly there with the Les Paul design. And, in the back room, Seth Lover was working on the humbucking pickup. He’d already made it by ’56, but he wasn’t able to get it into a guitar [until ’57] because the pickup routs would need to be re-engineered to accommodate the different size. But the PAF humbucker was the big game-changer.

The two Goldtops seen here are incredibly rare; they’re the only Les Paul Models I’ve ever seen with gold hardware.

The dual P-90 1956 guitar has original gold parts, including a factory-fitted Bigsby. The guitar player for the 1950s doo-wop band The Four Aces custom-ordered this guitar and found a playing card appliqué to put on the pickguard. Its sibling guitar is a PAF humbucker-loaded ’57 model. It’s a factory Bigsby guitar and it has the original sales receipt that is marked “gold hw/gold Bigs”.

They’re both really neat guitars for those reasons, but the point is they also play amazingly well.

The PAF was the shot heard round the world, but these Les Paul guitars also sound phenomenally good with P-90s. Some people are humbucking people, and some people are single-coil people. And Les Pauls can do it all. They work well with either type of pickup.

When it comes to Gibson, it had enough money to make a few attempts and survive any fails, whereas Fender was a smaller company and needed to nail it right away. It didn’t have the time to revisit the designs, make changes and retool. You have to think about the amount of engineering that goes into making these kinds of changes – all the processes involved in changing from a stud tailpiece to an ABR-1, for example.

These people were a lot smarter than me! When your kids are in school and they’re pissed off about having to do calculus and trigonometry, remind them that that kind of knowledge helped build things as cool as these two guitars. Engineering is hard work. But there’s good, strong thinking behind these designs. I’m not one of those people, but there are those who can think this far out of the box.

I mean, a lot of people can dream up guitars because all that stuff is already there. It’s easy to take for granted. But I think it’s worth remembering that it didn’t always exist. Somebody invented all of this. And I think that’s pretty remarkable.

Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York.
info@wellstrungguitars.com / 001 (516) 221-0563

The 355 first appeared in 1958 [as the mono ES-355TD] and is just a more ornate version of the 335 semi-hollowbody. Gibson basically put on the whole Les Paul Custom trim: the ebony ’board with the real mother-of-pearl blocks, as opposed to the ‘mother-of-toilet-seat’ inlays; multiple layers of binding on both the front and the back of the body; and the gold hardware.

Most 355s are stereo [the ES-355TD-SV released in 1959], and the [ES-355TD] mono versions are very desirable. Most of the early guitars were Bigsby-equipped, and by 1960 they were available with a sideways Vibrola. At one point you could also get them with an ebony-block Vibrola, like a Les Paul SG.

The stoptail models – which are few and far between – are quite coveted. Players like the stop tailpiece guitars because it gives you a better break angle, which helps with the sustain of the guitar, plus you can bend strings more cleanly. If the string is pulled down sharply, like on a stud tailpiece, it’ll bite. And it won’t slide across the saddle – you don’t get that weird pinging sound.

Gibson tried to rectify that in ’62 by changing from metal to nylon saddles. They stayed with that right through the '70s. I actually think they work very well, especially with an ebony ’board, which is a harder wood that tends to brighten the sound of the guitar. The nylon helps to take away some of that shrill high-end. So it serves its purpose. A lot of people think it’s a bad idea, but the engineers over at Gibson knew what they were doing.

The tops and backs of these laminated guitars were steam-pressed with a veneer of maple. The necks are mahogany. The earliest models come with Grover Rotomatic tuners and, in the early '60s, these were superseded by Kluson [Super] ‘waffleback’ tuners.

The Klusons work really well – they’re very well made. Although I have seen some people taking them off and putting Grovers on. There was this whole obsession with Grover tuners in the '70s. People were even putting them on Stratocasters. It was terrible.

This particular guitar was owned by just one person before me. It was specially ordered in Polaris White and it has all of its tags from when it was new. It’s a pretty neat piece and it has virtually no wear. All the gold plating is intact and there’s no verdigris.

This one has a laminated input jack ring, which was something you could order, but you don’t see it on that many guitars. I’ve seen it on several 355s, but I like that they took the time to use a white one for this guitar.

It’s a ’67, so it has the narrower nut width: 1 9/16-inch rather than the 1 11/16-inch. It’s a little bit narrower, but it plays very well. And by this stage the fret size was fairly large, so they work really well for rock ’n’ roll and blues guitar players.

This guitar sounds great. By ’67 Gibson were using T-top humbuckers, but I’ll be honest with you, I never really had a problem with T-top pickups – I think they sound great. To me, this is a very good instrument.

It has a sibling – a ’61 355 in Polaris White – that was virtually the same except it had the side-pull Vibrola. I sold it to Joe Bonamassa. That, too, was a wonderful electric guitar. Keith Richards has a white [ES-345], but I haven’t seen a whole lot of them. They didn’t make a lot of custom color 355s. It’s also very hard to get a sunburst 355, but I have come across a ’62 with the Maestro ‘leaf and lyre’ Vibrola.

355s are interesting. Because it was such a high-end instrument, I think a lot of players had more of a hand in how they wanted their guitar to be personalized. It was like instead of driving a Pontiac you got to drive a Cadillac. You know, when you ordered it, it could be customized to some extent. And I have had several artist-owned 355s that were personalized.

One of them had a Super 400 headstock with a family crest inlaid into the top. It belonged to a blues guy from Alabama. I also had a 1960 cherry 355 that was made for a guy called Bernie Smith with a stoptail. It has white dual pickguards, and each knob had a giant white washer. It also has a plaque that reads "Custom Made for Bernie Smith 1960." That’s a really interesting guitar.

People seem to forget that even back then Gibson had a custom shop, and you could basically draw up what you wanted within reason. And that’s where some of these really wacky special-order Gibsons came from.

Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York.

info@wellstrungguitars.com / 001 (516) 221-0563

This is a 1958 Fender Precision Bass. It has a white transparent blond finish over an ash body with a solid maple neck. It comes with its original tweed case and a matching 1958 Fender Bassman amplifier – both in impeccable condition.

This bass has a gold anodized pickguard, which Leo Fender started using in 1954 on special orders. They thought a metallic pickguard had good shielding properties, but the 60-cycle hum continued to be a problem.

In ’59, the [gold anodized] pickguard was replaced by the more familiar tortoiseshell [cellulose nitrate] ’guard and rosewood ’boards became standard.

In the late '50s, a variety of custom colors were available, but the regular Precision Bass finish was sunburst, moving from a two- to three-tone sunburst in February 1958.

This beautiful guitar has had two owners before me, both of whom are still alive. The instrument was originally purchased in Vermont. And it has virtually no wear at all. The case and the amp, too – they have barely a scuff.

The headstock and neck are completely straight, and it’s never needed any fret-dressing or filing. A lot of the time on these instruments the headstock will lean [forwards] because of the tension on the neck over the years. But this P-Bass has been stored properly.

It even has the original Fender flat-wound strings that it was shipped with. Suffice to say it’s in virtually ‘as new’ condition.  

The original receipt shows it was bought along with the [narrow panel 50-watt/4x10 tweed] ’58 Bassman from the same store. It was a ‘swimming supply and music store’. Back in the day, travelling salesmen would walk into stores and ask, ‘Would you be interested in selling Fender instruments?’ That’s kind of how things happened back then.

I’m not really old enough to remember stores like that, but I’ve seen many receipts over the years that had a mixture of different types of businesses under one roof, like furniture stores that also sold Gibson instruments, for example.  

The blond/ash body, maple neck and gold anodized ’guard spec P-Basses are kind of the Holy Grail pieces for some people. As are the Stratocasters. In fact, I recently sold a blond ’56 with a black anodized pickguard.

The [1957] prototype Jazzmaster was a Desert Sand finish with a black anodized pickguard. And I personally own an early ’59 Stratocaster with an anodized ’guard and Fullerton Red finish – the predecessor to Fiesta Red.

It’s very Pee Wee Crayton-looking. His was also Fullerton Red, although people often call it Fiesta Red. ’59 was the year Fender transitioned to Fiesta Red.  

This P-Bass is one of the scarce colored ones you’ll see from the era. Blond Fender guitars have an ash body, even after they switched to using alder in ’56, because the grain just looks so much better.

And with the gold ’guard it’s a super, super look, although I love them with tortoiseshell ’guards, too.

Blond is such a great color. There’s something specific about ’57 and early ’58 blond finishes; it’s a very white blond and very translucent looking.

If you look at, say, an earlier Blackguard, it’ll probably have much more of a honeyed color, and if you look at a ’59, they have much more white in the color and are less translucent. On this guitar, you can see the ash grain as if you’re looking through a slightly foggy window.

It made sense for Fender to move the P-Bass design away from the original slab-body ‘Telecaster’ bass to the Stratocaster-style contoured body [in 1954].

The Stratocaster was very popular in the late 50s – way more popular than the Tele. When the P-Bass changed again in ’57 [to also include a Strat-style headstock] it was because of the Stratocaster.

Similarly, the Jazz Bass [released in 1960] exists because the Jazzmaster’s offset body design was such a huge hit after it came out in ’58. By 1960, that was their number one-selling electric guitar, so they figured their next bass should mimic the look of the Jazzmaster.

Fender basses kind of followed that logic. Then, of course, the offset VI came out in ’61, followed by the Jaguar in ’62.  

I think the P-Bass is the quintessential rock ’n’ roll bass. The split-pickup design was a really interesting thing to do at the time [from 1957]: the location of the pickup on the body and the way it accentuates the bass in the lower two strings, while the coil for the higher two strings that sits further back towards the bridge gives it its unique voicing.

They even carried that split-pickup design on to the Electric XII model [released in 1965].  

The Jazz Bass pickups maybe do more tricks, but the P-Bass is often the instrument of choice for the person who wants that real thump and bottom-end.

That’s what makes the Precision Bass special for so many.

Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York.

info@wellstrungguitars.com / 001 (516) 221- 0563

Bill Carson [1926-2007] was a well-renowned guitarist who helped design the Stratocaster alongside Leo Fender. He was particularly involved with the guitar’s body contouring.

And this is a very special electric guitar. It’s one of the first slab- ’boards and one of the first Fiesta Red Strats Fender produced. It also has gold hardware and comes with handwritten letters from Bill Carson. He hand-shaped the neck himself and his name is written in block letters on the heel – they didn’t want it to get mixed up with the other necks in the factory.

Fiesta Red was a big color in the U.K. because of the Hank Marvin connection, and this is one of the early salmon-y looking Fiesta Red guitars.

Before Fiesta Red, red Fender custom color guitars were generally Fullerton Red, which is a different color. Unfortunately, Bill didn’t really take to the color as he thought it was too feminine for his liking.

This guitar was fitted with gold hardware throughout, including the truss rod nut and backplate screws. The gold ashtray bridge cover is in the original ‘burnt orange’-lined brown Fender case along with the two letters written by Bill Carson on Fender-headed paper dated February 1996.

The first letter reads: “Per our conversation, my inspection of the Fiesta Red Strat during the January ’96 NAMM show, this assembly definitely proved to me it was originally an instrument I put together for myself… The extra-skinny neck was from my own hand-sanding to fit my particular playing style… I believe the instrument was given to Neil Levang for TV reasons and TV exposure.” (Neil Levang [1932-2015] was a Fender endorsee and famously played guitar on The Lawrence Welk Show.)

The follow-up letter reads: “I thought you might find it interesting to know that this one was in a batch of our first attempt to do rosewood fretboards. That was another reason I didn’t particularly like the guitar. I’ve always preferred maple necks with a lacquer finish.”

The neck is exceptionally thin. I spent a bit of time playing it and I thought I’d hate it, but after the first few minutes I said, “Wow! This is really quite comfortable.”

You get to play some intricate chords that way. Because it’s a ’59 it doesn’t have a neck date, but if it was a later heel-stamped guitar [from ’62 onwards] I would think it would have been marked as an ‘A’ neck. The nut is very narrow. ‘B’ is the common [1 5/8 inch] nut width.

I’ve had about half a dozen wider [1 ¾ inch] ‘C’ necks in my life, and I’ve seen thinner [1 ½ inch] ‘A’ necks on a couple of Stratocasters before. They did offer an ‘A’ neck in the catalogue with a smaller nut width, but barely anyone ordered it.

Red Fender guitars from the ‘50s are probably not Fiesta Red; Fullerton Red was the color before [it]. It was named Fullerton Red because of George Fullerton and is more orange-looking than Fiesta Red.

When I met Bill Carson years ago, he told me [Fender] mixed every batch of Fiesta Red in-house. It was basically white paint with red added, but only half a drop would make a tremendous difference to the end result. It varied greatly, as we all know.

Fiesta can be all over the place. Eventually, they added more red to the mix. From ’59 to ’63, Fiesta Red was a pinker, more salmon-like color. By ’64 it’s a completely different color to how it looked between ’59 and ’63.

Before Fiesta Red, Fender had the Fullerton Red and they also used Roman Red, which is a little deeper looking. There is some overlap as they occasionally used Roman Red up until at least ’62 on guitars they sent out as Dakota Red. But it’s plain as day which one’s which because there’s a huge difference between Roman Red and Dakota Red. Roman is lighter and brighter.

Most of the time, Fiesta Red was shot over a Desert Sand-type of color or white primer. There are also Fiesta Red guitars painted over sunburst finishes – both in the U.S. and the U.K., like the Selmer guitars.

Sometimes, Fiesta Red is shot right over the Fullerplast [grain filler]. I think when production was high, they eliminated a step in order to get the guitars out as quickly as possible. They didn’t always have time to undercoat custom colors.

Occasionally, they didn’t have time to clearcoat the top, either. That’s why you sometimes see Olympic White guitars with no fade to yellow; the clearcoat is what turns yellow, not the color coat.

So not only is this guitar one of the first Fiesta Reds but it’s also one of the very first rosewood-’board Strats. This is truly an amazing guitar with some cool experimental features.

Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson is the owner of Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York.

When I was a kid, my first feeling of ‘I really need to own one of those electric guitars!’ was when I looked at a photo of a Stratocaster. It was sexy and curvy, and the itch was beyond control. I thought, ‘That’s what I want to hold.’

Fender just hit it out of the park when they made the first Strat. Sonically, I’ve always liked ’54 and ’55 Strats the most. I love the sound of ash-body Strats and I’ve found the heavier, thicker necks provide more sustain.

For some guys, like Eric Johnson, ’54 is the year. One good thing about vintage guitars is that they’re all snowflakes – each one is special and different. You have to find the one that scratches the itch, man! It’s all about the quest.

Even though the ’54 Strat is a wonderful instrument out of the box, things are a little more refined a few years down the line in ’57. It’s a bit like the Tele: by the time you get to ’53, it’s more refined and consistent.

There are three Stratocaster years that seem to always stick out: ’54 (because it’s the first year), ’57 and ’62.

I love the ’57 V-neck. Fender used ’57 as their flagship maple-neck reissue Strat in the early '80s, alongside the reissue rosewood-’board ’62. They weren’t perfect, but the ’57 and ’62 reissues were far superior to the regular Stratocasters they were making at the time. They were the foundation of what kept Fender in business.

’57 Strats represent a perfect storm. By then, Fender had started to phase out the Bakelite parts and they had switched to using alder [from mid-’56], which was cheaper, more plentiful and lighter.

’57 sunbursts have one of the sweeter looks. There’s a beautiful burnt amber tone to them that I like. If they needed to cover something up, they might blow a little more around the edge, but by then Fender had gotten to a point where they were able to get the lacquer really thin.

If you look at a ’54, the paint is thicker on the body and neck. Also, the ’54 neck profile is fuller with more of a U shape, which was a bit of a hindrance for some players.

I’ve seen V-necks as early as ’55, albeit with a subtler, softer V, but by late ’56 they really started getting that harder V-neck shape into play. The V neck tended to be very pronounced in early 1957, and by late 1957 they had changed to the more standard C shape you see on a ’58.

A lot of people really love the ’56/’57 V neck because you can place your thumb below or above it – it gives you that center point for hand positioning that a lot of pros really like. 

The maple V neck is something that really stuck for Clapton, as per his famed guitars Brownie and Blackie. When an artist is using a tool, they might want to make that tool their own, and he really did like the feel of a V neck.

The Stratocaster has a great woody tone, especially that neck pickup. Due to the Strat’s design, you can find those sweet in-between spots and get an out-of-phase tone.

Clapton popularized that sound early on – that’s why everyone rushed to get five-way switches installed – and then Fender themselves eventually changed the switch [in 1977].

In the early days, Fender would give guitars to local musicians to play and give feedback on directly. It was a case of, ‘What would you change? Is the neck too big or too small? Is the belly cut deep enough? Is the arm cut deep enough?’ Back then, Fender were always looking for improvements.

There was fierce competition between Gibson and Fender. Unfortunately, Gibsons were sometimes seen as old man’s guitars, while Fenders were seen as toys, and that was probably something Leo Fender didn’t like. He was constantly tinkering, so he fancied the guitars up while trying to get the perfect look.

I believe Leo thought a three-tone sunburst would be fancy – like putting binding on Custom Esquire and Tele bodies, or on Jaguar and Jazzmaster necks later on – but a lot things went wrong with the finish when they went to the three-tone sunburst in ’58. I think they had it right in ’57.

These guitars are really special and were made at a very specific time in American history. Most of the people who built these guitars in the 50s were part of that generation who put the same effort into their jobs as they did during World War II.

People were happier because they had more free time and they went to work with a little more optimism. They enjoyed their jobs and took a lot of pride in their workmanship.

It’s important to keep educating the younger generations about what a wonderful time this was in American guitar making.

David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have handled and possessed several prototype Stratocasters that were made very early on. It’s assumed the first 200 Stratocasters had [serial] numbers that appeared on the tremolo cover, starting with 0100. However, there are definitely prototype Stratocasters with earlier appointments made prior to this that were not serial numbered, some of which left the factory later.

The first Strats that went out were sent to sales reps as demo guitars. They went all around the country and even up into Western Canada – one of the Strats I’ve had was a guitar that belonged to a dealer rep in Calgary.

One of the earliest Stratocasters I’ve seen was at the Songbirds museum [in Chattanooga, Tennessee] and it had a January 1954 neck. The nut step was different – the part of the headstock face behind the nut. It was significantly longer than what Fender later settled on. Another prototype I had featured ‘television-size’ 1¾-inch potentiometers dated early 1952. Some of the ‘trem cover’ models, from the first 200, also have ’52 pots, but they’re the regular-size diameter. We also know the earliest Strat pickups have larger diameter polepieces, and the body routing and contouring are different.

Other early Stratocasters were finished in sunburst using what people sometimes call ‘furniture polish’, but is really a furniture stain, before being cleared over. Fender tried different things during this time. They experimented quite a bit during ’53.

It appears Leo Fender’s input to the Strat was limited to the development of the [Synchronized] Tremolo/vibrato unit, while others had input into the refinement of the Stratocaster’s design, right up until the regular production models.

I currently have Stratocasters 0102, 0103 and 0194. All three were demo guitars. 0102 is a completely original, beautiful instrument in fine condition. So is 0194. 0103 defines the true demonstrator guitar. It is a heavily worn instrument. It is also extremely heavy; it’s 8lb 12oz. That is extraordinarily heavy for a Stratocaster. Ash can be heavy sometimes, and that guitar happens to be the heaviest one from that era I’ve ever touched. Early 50s Broadcasters can be heavy, too. 

To me, this was just a test mule guitar they sent out to a dealer/rep to be a demonstrator. The tuning pegs were changed once before the originals were put back on, so it’s got some extra holes. The other two guitars, however – numbers 0102 and 0194 – remain completely intact and original. All three have their original ‘poodle’ cases. 0194 even has its original strap and cable.

I’ve had around 12 of these early electric guitars. All of the early guitars are between January and May of 1954, but I have seen preproduction Strats from May. There may have just been parts lying around the shop for a while and they said, ‘We might as well put it together and get it out of the door!’

The early Strats seem to have very tight neck pockets. Every time I’ve had to take one apart, the neck fights me coming off the guitar. It’s just stuck with lacquer and the fact it’s such a tight seal makes it difficult. I think by the time the Strats went into production, they made a bit more space so they could service the guitars without damaging the wood or finish. The back routing on the salesman samples is also sometimes done a bit differently.

The guitar bearing the serial number 0100 [neck date January ’54, body date April ’54] was sold by Gruhn a few years ago. One of my regrets is finding out about that guitar the day before it went online. It was marked up at a price I thought was ambitious at the time, but would love to buy it now! Because it’s really the first serial numbered Strat. Is it the first Stratocaster? No, it’s not. Is it the first serial numbered Strat? Yes, it is.

I’ve had 0102, 0103, 0112, 0117, 0108, 0158, 0168 and 0194. And I can tell you every one of those guitars is memorable. More memorable than the distinctions between one ’Burst and another. Each one is distinctly different. The neck shapes and edges are different. They’re all cut the same, but the hand-finishing process seems to vary. I think there were possibly way too many cooks in the kitchen at certain points. They had a lot of local musicians working there like Bill Carson and Freddie Tavares, and they all had input.

Leo wasn’t a player and could only trust the advice of those around him. But, he was listening all the time. By September ’54, the Stratocaster had evolved substantially. In my opinion, they were constantly trying to make a more perfect wheel.

Vintage guitar expert David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York.

The D-45s first appeared in 1933 as 12-fret models (the first was made for Gene Autry) and then they went to the 14-fret design a little later. They are the pinnacle of Martin, but it was really just a very well-appointed D-28; they were similarly constructed using Brazilian rosewood for the back and sides, Adirondack spruce for the top, and they had an ebony fingerboard and bridge.

When you talk about ‘pre-war’ guitars, people’s definitions can sometimes overlap. A lot of people think of that term as pre-World War II. But that means different things to different countries. And if you’re talking about the USA, we didn’t enter the war until right after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 (whereas the UK declared war on Nazi Germany at the start in 1939). 

So, when I look at this D-45 from 1941, it’s pre-war as far as the US is concerned, although some may stretch to calling it a ‘wartime build’. At least that’s how [Martin author and inlay artist] Mike Longworth explained it to me.

By 1942, there were no more 45-series guitars being made because of the war effort, and they didn’t come out again until 1968. That’s when Martin rebooted the D-45. What’s interesting about those Style 45 guitars from 1968-1970 is the fact they’re still really great guitars, even though that’s no longer the golden era.

A lot of people really like the Sitka spruce top they were using then. They were using Brazilian rosewood until 1970 when Martin had the fire. That’s when they lost a lot of their wood stock. It pretty much marked the end of Brazilian rosewood, aside from some later special Custom Shop builds.

When it comes to the debate between Brazilian and Indian rosewood, and tonewood, I think every guitar has its own merits. And the same could be said for electric guitars. I mean, you can have two ’59 Les Pauls that sound completely different, even when the pickup outputs are close to the same.

I think most of the sound of pre-war Martins has to do with the way they’re constructed: the width of the bridge plate and the bracing, for example, rather than the fact it’s made with Brazilian rosewood. Brazilian rosewood is beautiful to look at – that’s the big difference. There are great Brazilian rosewood guitars I’ve played and not-so-great Brazilian rosewood guitars I’ve played. Same with Indian.

A big part of what makes the pre-war D-45s so desirable is the fact there were so few made of course, but it’s also to do with the seasoning and the ageing of the wood. If a guitar is played on a regular basis for many years, it’ll tend to sound better than otherwise.

Many years ago, I was given a tip: take your acoustic guitar and put it next to your subwoofer stereo and let the vibrations go through the guitar. And I found it really made a difference! When I was selling new D-45s, I found the one we demoed in the store that was played on a regular basis sounded much better than the one that just came out of the box. Guitars need to be opened up through being played. That’s when the harmonics come through and the guitar starts to ring well.

This D-45 had not been played much until about 15 years ago when it went to somebody who actually used it. Before that, it sounded rather shallow for a D-45, but now it has this huge sound like a baby grand piano.

If you play a chord, there’s no saturation; you can hear each note in the chord brilliantly. To me, that’s always the sign of a great top on a guitar. Rosewood has a fuller, bassier tone than mahogany. The [mahogany] D-18, for example, is a naturally brighter guitar, and when you play it fingerstyle, it’s powerful, but a rosewood guitar like a D-28 or D-45 is deeper sounding. And I think the rosewood back and sides has a lot to do with that.

Like I said, the D-45 is really just a gussied-up D-28, but in the pre-war period you’re talking about a herringbone D-28, which is also one of the most desirable flattops in the world. The D-45 is more or less the same: it’s all accoutrement. I don’t think there’s any difference in tone. In fact, I have several pre-war Martins and the only one that stands up against the D-45 is a D-28 with a shaded top. That’s got that baby grand piano thing going on too.

But D-45s are the pinnacle of Martin flat-tops, they’re incredible instruments to play.

Vintage guitar expert David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York

These Gretsch 6134 White Penguins are incredibly rare. It’s estimated Gretsch made 12 to 15 single-cutaway and eight to 10 double-cutaway 6134s. Back in the day, Gretsch really didn’t advertise them, but I think if they had marketed the White Penguin, it would have been a successful guitar. I imagine these guitars were custom ordered. I mean, this model just wasn’t hanging around in music stores.

The White Penguin came out in 1955 – the same year as the White Falcon – but they weren’t even put on the price list until 1959. They were cheaper than the White Falcon, but not now! This ’58 single-cut has got an appraisal from 1986 by George Gruhn for $88,000. Nowadays, they go for anything between $125,000 to $150,000. Gibson Explorers sell for five times as much, but they’re rarer than those and they’re much, much rarer than ’Bursts. So I think they should probably be worth more than that.

You know the slogan, ‘That great Gretsch sound’? Well, it’s certainly their sound. You can’t pick up any Fender or Gibson and make it sound like a Gretsch. Even the earlier DeArmond [Model 2000/Dynasonic pickup] Gretsch guitars sound completely different. This single-cut has incredible tone. It’s wired with two separate volume controls – one for each pickup – along with a master volume, and it has a tone switch, so there’s no tone knob.

It’s also a very pretty guitar. I love the little jeweled knobs with the ruby marker. That’s pretty cool. It has an ebony ’board with ‘thumbprint’ inlays – those replaced the humpback inlays in ’58 – and Grover Imperial tuners. Up until late ’58, White Penguins have the vertical headstock logo and many have the ‘Cadillac’ tailpiece, but mine has a factory-fitted Bigsby. Both White Falcons and White Penguins have gold hardware, but if they’re equipped with a Bigsby, the aluminum Bigsby will not be gold-plated.

This 1962 double-cut White Falcon has a Burns vibrato with a plastic handle, as was standard at the time. Some people call them the ‘Burns bar’. This guitar is just a stunner. Like the ’58, it has individual [Filter’Tron] pickup volume knobs, a master volume knob and tone switching. It’s got a beautiful ‘T-top’ Gretsch headstock logo and gold backplates.

The binding on this one is in great condition. It really wasn’t played much at all. It still has the original white strap and the original paperwork, which is cool. I don’t know of another one that has the original guarantee card. I mean, you often see Gretsch guarantee cards, but it’s pretty funny to see ‘White Penguin’ on there!

I’ve never had, or personally seen, a Penguin with DeArmond pickups, although, obviously, they made them. [From 1958] Gretsch built them with regular Filter’Trons, and some have the Project-O-Sonic stereo electronics. Project-O-Sonic pickups were an option, but it’s been well documented that Gretsch wired some in mono, like the ’58 single-cut guitar I have.

Gibson had the Stereo Vari-tone thing happening in the late 50s, and Gretsch were trying to keep up with them. Gretsch were more of a follower in many ways. The Duo-Jet came out in ’53 and was modelled to be a competitor to the Les Paul while priced about $100 less.

White Penguins are essentially Jet model guitars; the body shape is identical. Jet bodies are chambered and smaller-bodied, so they’re light and easy to haul around. The main difference is the White Penguin has a wide headstock, because the neck is the same as the White Falcon; it’s basically a Falcon neck transplanted onto a Jet body. Consequently, the headstocks on both of these guitars are wide. In fact, the earlier guitars came with a special case to accommodate that. These cases alone are now worth thousands and thousands of dollars!

Many years ago, I had Gretsch employees tell me they would regularly have Martini lunches before building the guitars, but I think these two White Penguins were made with a little extra effort. They seem put together nicely. They play well and they have good neck angles; they’ve not been reset.

I’ve had two straight single-cuts and one double-cut in my life, but I’ve seen several that had numerous problems, including broken headstocks, and/or strange appointments that I would hesitate to authenticate.

I’ve seen two ’58 White Penguins. But I wasn’t convinced the other one was 100 per cent real. Not a lot of people know this, but if you magnify the original gold sparkle binding, each little sparkle should appear octagonal-shaped. When you look at reissues or others where the binding has been replaced, that isn’t the case because nobody makes that binding any more. You can’t get it anywhere. And because the celluloid binding on so many of these guitars shrinks and rots and breaks away, it’s very common to see Falcons and Penguins with pieces of binding missing. Most Gretsch guitars from this period are starting to develop problems, although these two are very much intact.

So, I’m very happy to have them in the store. They really are the Holy Grail of Gretsch collectors.

David Davidson is the owner of Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York.

My first Fender guitar was a Jaguar. When I was a child, I used to check the local buy-and-sell newspaper every day and one day, among a garage sale, I saw the words ‘Gibson guitar’. That’s all it said. I was nine years old, so I asked my dad to drive me over there with my $40, which I had made delivering newspapers.

It was an ES-125TC. They wanted $100 for it and my father broke these people’s chops relentlessly until I got it for $40. I was so excited. You know, a Gibson guitar!

Anyway, after having that guitar for about a year, I decided I wanted to sell it because I wanted to save some money for a Stratocaster. So, with my parents’ help, I put an ad in the same buy-and-sell newspaper and I asked $100 for it. This guy asked me, ‘Would you be interested in a trade?’

I had never even heard of Fender Jaguar, but then he came by with a [first year of production] 1962 Burgundy Mist Jaguar. I was just blown away by the fact I had a Fender guitar in my hands. My father went to the negotiating table for me, and the guy said, ‘How about I give you my Jaguar and $40 for the Gibson?’ So, I got my $40 back and a free Burgundy Mist Fender Jaguar, which I still have.

I was obsessed with surf music and thought it was a really cool electric guitar. You’d see photographs in magazines of people playing Jaguars all the time. Even Roy Clark was playing one, it was crazy – Fender just put them in everyone’s hands.

This was around 1973/1974 and I was just a kid. They stopped making them in 1975, but production had ground almost to a halt by 1970. I think the purpose of the Jaguar was to try to tweak the Jazzmaster with a faster neck and an extra fret. The idea was to shorten the scale from 25.5 inches to 24 inches and to keep working with the separate Rhythm and Lead circuits.

Later on, they tried to make those guitars fancier. In late 1964 and early 1965 they started using pearloid dot inlays, and then they went to the neck binding in late 1965. Finally, block markers were added in the first quarter of ’66. I think the idea was to have a competitive look similar to the block inlays Gibson started putting in their ES guitars in 1962. I think it took a little while for Fender to catch up, but when CBS took over the company it was like a war. Everything was reactionary.

The Environmental Protection Agency had changed the rules and Fender suddenly found themselves using heavy wood that they wouldn’t have used before. They were obsessed with trying to get a lighter guitar. I have a lot of other prototype Fenders from that period: a Marauder, a thinline Stratocaster, a spruce-top hollowbody Telecaster, and a Telecaster Thinline prototype. These were all [Roger] Rossmeisl ideas they were trying out, while attempting to come up with something lightweight and usable.

The ‘smuggler’s’ Teles were in ’67, and the Tele Thinline came in ’68, so they were obviously experimenting with trying to make lightweight guitars. They worked out a lightweight Tele, but after 1966, Jaguar and Jazzmaster sales fizzled greatly. By ’67, both of those guitars were an afterthought because Hendrix appears with a Stratocaster.

This guitar is one of the most unusual instruments I’ve seen. Just the angling of the bridge pickup is saying, ‘We need to get more Stratocaster out of the Jaguar.’ You know, a hybrid. But obviously it never happened. The slotted polepieces of both pickups are adjustable. That’s the first Fender guitar with adjustable polepieces. They work differently from any other pickups and it sounds completely different to a regular Jaguar; it’s much thicker sounding. Regular Jaguar pickups sound kind of midrange-y and almost nasal. And yet these pickups give it that lower end. It’s a combination of that and the fact it’s chambered that changes the sound.

In [the lower bass bout] there is a long, somewhat hockey stick shaped rout. In [the lower treble bout] there is a doughnut-shaped hole. And underneath the pickguard there is an extra-wide channel routed. It still has the belly contour, but no forearm contour.

It has a flat alder top that was glued on after the alder body was routed, and the seam is disguised by single-ply white binding. The only thing that would have put the icing on the cake with the guitar is if it was a [custom] color instead of sunburst. I mean, if you’re going that far, why not just paint it some crazy color?!”

Vintage guitar expert David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York.

“Lavender Lilac Fenders are incredibly rare,” says David Davidson, “and we’ve got three of them at Well Strung Guitars at the moment – two 1971 Lavender Lilac Telecaster Thinlines: one with a rosewood ’board and purple pickguard, and the other with a maple ’board.

“They made some Thinlines in Lavender Lilac, but the standard 1973 model we have is the only regular Telecaster I know of that was made in that color. I guess they had paint left over! As far as I’m aware, they never made a Lavender Lilac Stratocaster or anything else like a Coronado around that time. It appears the color was specific to the Thinlines.

“I have a copy of [Fender employee] Freddie Tavares’ handwritten list from the late ‘60s of the new colors that were going to come out for the Thinline Telecasters. In 1968, Fender were looking at a bunch of new colors, including Lavender Lilac. It says, ‘New colors for Telecaster Hollow Bodies: Jet Black, Canary Yellow, Salmon, Lavender Lilac, Hot Pink, Kelly Green.’ Salmon is a slightly pinker version of Fiesta Red. Hot Pink is like a bubblegum pink.

“Fender launched the Thinline Telecaster in ’68 and I think they were trying to make a big splash. Almost all the guitars made in the above colors went to trade shows. You could order them in your local store, but word got out late. By 1970, people were not ordering them much. So most of these colors have not been seen by many people. But we’ve had every color, and almost every color with rosewood and maple ’boards.

“Fender used their own names for these colors, but there is normally also an automotive [industry] name for them, too, and a paint code. Sometimes paints were Duco nitrocellulose lacquer, sometimes they were Lucite acrylic, or maybe Centari acrylic/enamel. There were many different types of paint and there were different manufacturers such as DuPont and Ditzler. Fender would ask for a paint by number and by the code for the type of paint – like L for Lucite, A for Centari, D for Deluxe enamel and so on.

“The formula could be mixed up at a local body supply place. Interestingly, the automotive industry started to phase out nitrocellulose in the early '60s; by 1964, most cars were finished in safer paints. Ford went to all enamel paint, for example.

“The standard finishes for Tele Thinlines were sunburst and natural mahogany and ash. They often had a combination of both woods on the body, but some were all mahogany and some were all ash. It was a case of whatever they had, they used. We recently sold one that has a mahogany back and sides and an ash top, and I have one here at the moment, which is all mahogany. Natural finishes were all the rage in the late '60s and Fender carried that forward through the '70s as options for the Stratocaster and Telecaster. They’d strip their guitars down and route them for humbuckers and all kinds of things. Everyone was into ‘natural’ things and flowers.

“Around 1969, major auto manufacturers in the US came out with crazy colors, just like these Thinlines. Dodge had their High Impact colors like Plum Crazy purple, Go Mango orange and Sassy Grass green, while Ford had their Grabber colors that you see on Mustangs like Grabber Blue, Grabber Green and Grabber Orange. Fender custom colors are based on these trends in the automotive industries. The electric guitar industry always followed the auto industry.

“There were also the Paisley Red and Blue Flower Teles that came out in ’68. They made about 75 guitars and 25 basses in each finish, so they’re quite rare. They used a product called Cling-Foil that was made by the Borden company. We actually have an unused piece of Paisley Cling-Foil. It’s a peel and stick product, like a thick metallic wallpaper. Fender stuck it onto the wood and painted around the edges of the body and pickup routes.

“The Thinlines were one of Roger Rossmeisl’s designs and they were his most successful Fender guitar by far. He also worked on the Coronado, LTD and Wildwood guitars. He was a woodcarver and believed in carving the tops. Before Fender, he made beautiful tops for Rickenbacker and created amazing designs. He was very much the craftsman, as opposed to a machine worker. But Fender were struggling to come up with lightweight guitars and the Telecaster Thinline seemed to be a good solution.”

Vintage guitar expert David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York.

“This is a very interesting instrument. It’s a beautiful piece. It was part of a really nice collection we bought of around a dozen Fender VI guitars in all sorts of custom colors. Burgundy Mist is a DuPont Lucite acrylic color that dates back to 1959. It’s not a DuPont Duco nitrocellulose color, although the Fender guitars will have a nitrocellulose clearcoat. It’s a pretty rare color.

“In the 1960s, most of the electric guitar players were men, and so Burgundy Mist Metallic along with pastel shades like Shell Pink proved to be less popular. The most popular custom colors were Candy Apple Red Metallic, Olympic White and Lake Placid Blue Metallic. Fender made a lot of custom color VIs because of that whole push in the surf era. I’ve seen most of them in my time: Foam Green, Sonic Blue, Natural, Black, Shoreline Gold, Firemist Gold and Inca Silver to name some. But I’ve never had a Fender VI in Shell Pink or Surf Green.

“Right now, we also have a ’62 slab-’board Roman Red, which is cool. It’s darker than Fiesta [Red] but lighter than Dakota [Red], and it has a really crazy swirly Brazilian rosewood fretboard. We had a ’62 slab- ’board Burgundy Mist last year with a matching headstock that was mint. This one is from ’65 and has a little bit more wear, but it’s honest playing wear. It has a white ’guard, as opposed to the earlier green nitrate type, and it has clay-dot fretboard markers.

“Fender made so many VI necks in advance. In fact, it’s very common to find a neck that was made two years prior to the guitar being completed. I’ve had 1965 Fender VI guitars with necks that were made in 1963 before. I think sales weren’t as brisk as they’d hoped, and parts sat around for a while until they were used.

“Most people call it a ‘bass VI’, but strictly speaking its model name is simply the Fender VI [pronounced ‘six’]. It’s a bit like when people add the word ‘sea’ to Foam Green, as in ‘sea foam green’. I bought my first Fender VI about 30 years ago and it’s still the earliest one I’ve ever seen. Fender introduced them in ’61, but this one had a neck date of November 1960. The first VIs had the Stratocaster-style pickup with the bigger surrounds and three switches, but from early ’63 they changed to the Jaguar-style pickup and added a fourth switch.

“I don’t think they were huge sellers right out of the gate, but they hit their peak around ’63 to ’64 and Fender made them all the way up until the mid-70s. We have one here at Well Strung Guitars at the moment from 1974 that has a Natural [finish] ash body with block inlays. That’s pretty cool because you don’t often see them from that era.

“I’ve seen them used in all types of music from surf rock to country to jazz. I mean, they’re very versatile. They provide a pretty wide range of tonal possibilities. You can get them sounding very mushy and soupy or very bright and woody. They’re great because you can play them through either a guitar amp or a bass amp, but I generally prefer them through a guitar amp as they tend to preserve the highs a little bit better.

“You can play them with reverb and tremolo, and they sound wonderful through a Fender amp like a Twin Reverb. There’s no better example of that sound than Glen Campbell’s solo in his [1968] hit "Wichita Lineman" [listen from 1:47]. It’s not an intricate solo, but it is great. It perfectly encapsulates the sound of a Fender VI.

“The vibrato is kind of interesting, but I don’t know if many people actually used it. The switching works in the same way as a Jaguar’s Lead circuit in that you have an on/off switch for each pickup along with a tone switch, plus master volume and master tone knobs. Fender VIs can sound nice and focused and percussive, and they can really add support to a bassline or guitar line. John Entwistle made the thing sound like a regular guitar by playing it up in the higher registers.

“They have a 30-inch scale and are usually tuned in standard tuning but an octave lower than a regular six-string guitar. The interesting thing about these instruments is that, unlike other basses, you can easily play chords as well as single-note lines. You might not necessarily want to strum the chords as it might get a little muddy, but arpeggios and fingerstyle playing often sounds really good. A lot of well-known musicians used a ‘Bass VI’ back in the day and there are a lot of videos online you can watch and hear people playing them.”

Vintage guitar expert David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York.