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PAGE ONE
The Easy Way
To Hard Rock:
'Distressed' Guitars
New Models Are Beat Up
To Look Like Old Ones;
The Police Use Doubles
By ETHAN SMITH
August 25, 2007; Page A1
CORONA, Calif. -- At the Fender guitar factory here recently, Mike Eldred carefully laid the freshly painted body of a baby blue Stratocaster on a workbench. He then proceeded to scar the new instrument's delicate lacquer surface using a menacing leather strap adorned with belt buckles, nuts and other hardware.
Normally, even one of the resulting scratches or dings on a brand-new instrument would make a guitar enthusiast cringe. But in the hands of Mr. Eldred, they are the first steps in the process of creating a "relic" guitar -- a brand new instrument that has been deliberately aged to simulate decades' worth of rock-and-roll wear and tear.
1AP, Fender Eric Clapton played the Fender Stratocaster he called "Blackie" at the Live Aid concert in Philadelphia in July 1985. Fender is now selling a model that duplicates every last scrape and crack."This is the one I really like," Mr. Eldred says, forcefully swinging his makeshift tool to leave a deep welt in the Strat's body. He calls the resulting gash "the cymbal stand" because it's meant to look "like the guitarist bumped into the drum set during a gig."
Relics have taken off recently for a simple reason. The market for real vintage guitars has skyrocketed far beyond the reach of average collectors, with the most-desirable instruments now fetching $250,000 or more, and even lesser axes commanding tens of thousands of dollars. That has sent collectors of more-modest means scrambling for guitars that look virtually identical to decades-old instruments, even though they are brand new.
For example, the abuse inflicted on the handcrafted Stratocaster made by Mr. Eldred -- a replica of the instrument as it was built in 1960 -- will contribute to its $3,600 price tag -- a $500 premium over a comparable model that hasn't been similarly mistreated.
Before assembling and shipping out "relic" guitars, Mr. Eldred's employees at Fender Musical Instruments Corp.'s Custom Shop will use powerful industrial solvents to create worn spots in the paint, and the subfreezing accelerant from aerosol cans to mimic the subtle "weather checking" cracks that spider across old lacquer surfaces.
With sandpaper, workers simulate finger wear on the fretboard. They dull the chrome plating on brass fittings in a vibrating electric "tumbler" normally used by lapidary artists to polish rocks, then further degrade the metal using nitric acid, which also is used to rust screws and other steel hardware. Furniture dye and grease pencil imbue exposed wood with the nightclub-appropriate hues of tobacco smoke and spilled whiskey.
"Usually in a collectible, condition is very important," says Vince Cunetto, who as a contractor, did aging work on Fender's relics when the company began making them in the mid-1990s. "Here that's all reversed." Mr. Cunetto now builds his own Vinetto brand guitars, including an "Artifact" line that employs many of the same antiquing techniques.
There is great debate within the guitar-collecting community about the faux-vintage instruments' worth over the long term. "They're too new to say whether they retain value," says Hawley Waldman, a New York guitar builder and technician.
Shai Mizrahi, a 32-year-old professional martial-arts fighter and amateur blues musician, recently added a relic to his collection of 26 mostly vintage guitars. He says he was somewhat skeptical about paying almost $4,000 for the artificially distressed replica of a 1964 Stratocaster, built at Fender's Custom Shop. "I struggled with this concept," he says.
But he now calls the relic his favorite guitar, and plays it more often, for instance, than his 1962 Stratocaster that cost $60,000. He says the prematurely worn-in neck and body make the instrument play better than an untouched new instrument, and he prefers the way the artificial aging looks to that of many of his genuinely old guitars. "It's new, but it feels broken in," he says.
For most people who buy relics, the idea is simply to own a cool-looking guitar. "A lot of the guys we sell to are dentists or lawyers or whatever," says Dave Rogers, owner of Dave's Guitars in La Crosse, Wis., where Fender's Relic line accounts for more than 12% of its $5 million annual sales. "They're never going to put in the wear and tear to make it look like a real one."
"I always use the pre-faded blue jean analogy," says Tom Murphy, whose Guitar Preservation Inc. does antiquing work for Fender's main competitor, the Gibson Guitar Corp. "We know what that's all about: Why wait? Just buy 'em like that."
Some relics are so painstakingly aged that the end result is scratch-for-scratch copies of legendary guitars owned by real rock stars. This even appeals to the rock stars themselves, who have put in decades of sweat equity to create the real thing. As their prized vintage instruments have become increasingly valuable and fragile, some have begun using replicas of their famous guitars, especially on long tours.
Mr. Murphy, a former professional musician who in the early '80s played guitar in Marie Osmond's touring band, has built replicas now played by Led Zeppelin's legendary guitarist Jimmy Page and Aerosmith's Joe Perry, among others.
In a few instances, guitar makers have sold limited runs of replicas, with every nick, scratch and stain duplicated on new instruments made to look and feel like those made famous by Eric Clapton, Mr. Page and the Clash's Joe Strummer. Fender is producing copies of Police guitarist Andy Summers's 1961 Telecaster -- which he bought used in 1972 for $200 -- which are authentic right down to the broken bridge and quirky custom electronics. The 250 replicas are being offered at $15,000 each; dealers have already sold most of them, sight unseen, according to Fender and dealers.
This summer, Mr. Summers is using three of the replicas on his band's reunion tour; he is leaving the original home in Los Angeles. The British-born guitarist says that visually and musically he can't tell the difference between the doppelgangers and the original, whose battered paint job he compares to "a map of a foreign planet."
When Mr. Summers was shown the first finished duplicate, at a recording studio in Los Angeles, he says he experienced "a quantum-physics moment. I said: 'It's back at my house. How's it here? It's an impossibility!"'
Such sentiments run counter to the emotional attachment many guitarists feel to their main instrument. In an autobiography published last year, Mr. Summers wrote about his Telecaster in deeply romantic terms: "Arriving at this guitar was a bit like having several relationships with the wrong women before finding the one you truly love and will spend the rest of your life with."
Selling duplicates to potentially any hobbyist with a five-figure budget, then, spawned "a peculiar feeling," Mr. Summers acknowledges. But he says, he doesn't want to be "insane" in his possessiveness. "People love it and I want to share it." The "reasonably substantial" fee Fender is paying him has helped him get over any lingering hesitation. "It's like found money," he says.
On the tour, Mr. Summers's bandmate Sting is playing a replica of his worn 1955 Fender Precision bass. The company says it made just one copy for him, and hasn't approached Sting about a production model of his instrument.
Thanks largely to the growing stakes, the relic phenomenon has generated controversy within the often-claustrophobic subculture of high-end guitar builders.
One of the biggest independent builders, Bill Nash, turns out an estimated 80 to 100 relics a month, all with shapes lifted from Fender's famous models. NashGuitars' artificially aged "TimeWarp" line includes an "S series" modeled on Fender's sleek Stratocaster design, and a "T series" that looks like the blocky Telecaster. Mr. Nash doesn't put Fender's name or logo on his guitars, which typically sell for about $1,500.
"Nash is clearly attempting to rip off Fender," Mr. Eldred says.
Mr. Nash doesn't dispute the design origins of his guitars. "Obviously, I'm building replicas of old Fenders," he says. "But I've never said I'm Fender. There's room for everyone. The fact is, most people can't afford a Custom Shop guitar and they can afford mine." For instance, his replica of guitar legend Jeff Beck's battered Fender Esquire -- advertised under the moniker "E Series, JB Model" -- sold for around $3,000. Fender's official version cost $15,000.
Fender Chief Legal Officer Mark Van Vleet says in a statement that the company "protects and defends its intellectual property rights." It hasn't sued Mr. Nash.
As for whether artificially distressed models sound better than comparable new guitars, most people who build them say one common method improves the instrument's sound: Painting it with a thin but fragile coating of lacquer, which lets it resonate better than the thick, tough polyurethane varnish favored today in large-scale production. But how do the replicas compare to truly old guitars?
Aerosmith's Mr. Perry says that while on tour, he uses both vintage guitars, which he usually hand carries, and replicas. "There are a lot of fantastic guitars being made now that can easily stand up to the sound of the vintage guitars," he says. "However, nothing sounds as good as the real thing."
PAGE ONE
The Easy Way
To Hard Rock:
'Distressed' Guitars
New Models Are Beat Up
To Look Like Old Ones;
The Police Use Doubles
By ETHAN SMITH
August 25, 2007; Page A1
CORONA, Calif. -- At the Fender guitar factory here recently, Mike Eldred carefully laid the freshly painted body of a baby blue Stratocaster on a workbench. He then proceeded to scar the new instrument's delicate lacquer surface using a menacing leather strap adorned with belt buckles, nuts and other hardware.
Normally, even one of the resulting scratches or dings on a brand-new instrument would make a guitar enthusiast cringe. But in the hands of Mr. Eldred, they are the first steps in the process of creating a "relic" guitar -- a brand new instrument that has been deliberately aged to simulate decades' worth of rock-and-roll wear and tear.
1AP, Fender Eric Clapton played the Fender Stratocaster he called "Blackie" at the Live Aid concert in Philadelphia in July 1985. Fender is now selling a model that duplicates every last scrape and crack."This is the one I really like," Mr. Eldred says, forcefully swinging his makeshift tool to leave a deep welt in the Strat's body. He calls the resulting gash "the cymbal stand" because it's meant to look "like the guitarist bumped into the drum set during a gig."Relics have taken off recently for a simple reason. The market for real vintage guitars has skyrocketed far beyond the reach of average collectors, with the most-desirable instruments now fetching $250,000 or more, and even lesser axes commanding tens of thousands of dollars. That has sent collectors of more-modest means scrambling for guitars that look virtually identical to decades-old instruments, even though they are brand new.
For example, the abuse inflicted on the handcrafted Stratocaster made by Mr. Eldred -- a replica of the instrument as it was built in 1960 -- will contribute to its $3,600 price tag -- a $500 premium over a comparable model that hasn't been similarly mistreated.
Before assembling and shipping out "relic" guitars, Mr. Eldred's employees at Fender Musical Instruments Corp.'s Custom Shop will use powerful industrial solvents to create worn spots in the paint, and the subfreezing accelerant from aerosol cans to mimic the subtle "weather checking" cracks that spider across old lacquer surfaces.
With sandpaper, workers simulate finger wear on the fretboard. They dull the chrome plating on brass fittings in a vibrating electric "tumbler" normally used by lapidary artists to polish rocks, then further degrade the metal using nitric acid, which also is used to rust screws and other steel hardware. Furniture dye and grease pencil imbue exposed wood with the nightclub-appropriate hues of tobacco smoke and spilled whiskey.
"Usually in a collectible, condition is very important," says Vince Cunetto, who as a contractor, did aging work on Fender's relics when the company began making them in the mid-1990s. "Here that's all reversed." Mr. Cunetto now builds his own Vinetto brand guitars, including an "Artifact" line that employs many of the same antiquing techniques.
There is great debate within the guitar-collecting community about the faux-vintage instruments' worth over the long term. "They're too new to say whether they retain value," says Hawley Waldman, a New York guitar builder and technician.
Shai Mizrahi, a 32-year-old professional martial-arts fighter and amateur blues musician, recently added a relic to his collection of 26 mostly vintage guitars. He says he was somewhat skeptical about paying almost $4,000 for the artificially distressed replica of a 1964 Stratocaster, built at Fender's Custom Shop. "I struggled with this concept," he says.
But he now calls the relic his favorite guitar, and plays it more often, for instance, than his 1962 Stratocaster that cost $60,000. He says the prematurely worn-in neck and body make the instrument play better than an untouched new instrument, and he prefers the way the artificial aging looks to that of many of his genuinely old guitars. "It's new, but it feels broken in," he says.
For most people who buy relics, the idea is simply to own a cool-looking guitar. "A lot of the guys we sell to are dentists or lawyers or whatever," says Dave Rogers, owner of Dave's Guitars in La Crosse, Wis., where Fender's Relic line accounts for more than 12% of its $5 million annual sales. "They're never going to put in the wear and tear to make it look like a real one."
"I always use the pre-faded blue jean analogy," says Tom Murphy, whose Guitar Preservation Inc. does antiquing work for Fender's main competitor, the Gibson Guitar Corp. "We know what that's all about: Why wait? Just buy 'em like that."
Some relics are so painstakingly aged that the end result is scratch-for-scratch copies of legendary guitars owned by real rock stars. This even appeals to the rock stars themselves, who have put in decades of sweat equity to create the real thing. As their prized vintage instruments have become increasingly valuable and fragile, some have begun using replicas of their famous guitars, especially on long tours.
Mr. Murphy, a former professional musician who in the early '80s played guitar in Marie Osmond's touring band, has built replicas now played by Led Zeppelin's legendary guitarist Jimmy Page and Aerosmith's Joe Perry, among others.
In a few instances, guitar makers have sold limited runs of replicas, with every nick, scratch and stain duplicated on new instruments made to look and feel like those made famous by Eric Clapton, Mr. Page and the Clash's Joe Strummer. Fender is producing copies of Police guitarist Andy Summers's 1961 Telecaster -- which he bought used in 1972 for $200 -- which are authentic right down to the broken bridge and quirky custom electronics. The 250 replicas are being offered at $15,000 each; dealers have already sold most of them, sight unseen, according to Fender and dealers.
This summer, Mr. Summers is using three of the replicas on his band's reunion tour; he is leaving the original home in Los Angeles. The British-born guitarist says that visually and musically he can't tell the difference between the doppelgangers and the original, whose battered paint job he compares to "a map of a foreign planet."
When Mr. Summers was shown the first finished duplicate, at a recording studio in Los Angeles, he says he experienced "a quantum-physics moment. I said: 'It's back at my house. How's it here? It's an impossibility!"'
Such sentiments run counter to the emotional attachment many guitarists feel to their main instrument. In an autobiography published last year, Mr. Summers wrote about his Telecaster in deeply romantic terms: "Arriving at this guitar was a bit like having several relationships with the wrong women before finding the one you truly love and will spend the rest of your life with."
Selling duplicates to potentially any hobbyist with a five-figure budget, then, spawned "a peculiar feeling," Mr. Summers acknowledges. But he says, he doesn't want to be "insane" in his possessiveness. "People love it and I want to share it." The "reasonably substantial" fee Fender is paying him has helped him get over any lingering hesitation. "It's like found money," he says.
On the tour, Mr. Summers's bandmate Sting is playing a replica of his worn 1955 Fender Precision bass. The company says it made just one copy for him, and hasn't approached Sting about a production model of his instrument.
Thanks largely to the growing stakes, the relic phenomenon has generated controversy within the often-claustrophobic subculture of high-end guitar builders.
One of the biggest independent builders, Bill Nash, turns out an estimated 80 to 100 relics a month, all with shapes lifted from Fender's famous models. NashGuitars' artificially aged "TimeWarp" line includes an "S series" modeled on Fender's sleek Stratocaster design, and a "T series" that looks like the blocky Telecaster. Mr. Nash doesn't put Fender's name or logo on his guitars, which typically sell for about $1,500.
"Nash is clearly attempting to rip off Fender," Mr. Eldred says.
Mr. Nash doesn't dispute the design origins of his guitars. "Obviously, I'm building replicas of old Fenders," he says. "But I've never said I'm Fender. There's room for everyone. The fact is, most people can't afford a Custom Shop guitar and they can afford mine." For instance, his replica of guitar legend Jeff Beck's battered Fender Esquire -- advertised under the moniker "E Series, JB Model" -- sold for around $3,000. Fender's official version cost $15,000.
Fender Chief Legal Officer Mark Van Vleet says in a statement that the company "protects and defends its intellectual property rights." It hasn't sued Mr. Nash.
As for whether artificially distressed models sound better than comparable new guitars, most people who build them say one common method improves the instrument's sound: Painting it with a thin but fragile coating of lacquer, which lets it resonate better than the thick, tough polyurethane varnish favored today in large-scale production. But how do the replicas compare to truly old guitars?
Aerosmith's Mr. Perry says that while on tour, he uses both vintage guitars, which he usually hand carries, and replicas. "There are a lot of fantastic guitars being made now that can easily stand up to the sound of the vintage guitars," he says. "However, nothing sounds as good as the real thing."
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