A guitarist pulled into Nazareth for some Indian rosewood and then hunted for hardware to customize his Ibanez Musician.
Bertha started out as a 1980 Ibanez Musician with the 5-piece neck-through series. After figuring out what I wanted, I went to my friend and luthier, Tim Huenke of Superior Guitars (Washington, Pennsylvania), and we put her together. He did the work; I did the scavenger hunt for the parts.
We stripped out the body and most of the parts, then shaved down the body area (including the neck-through part) by 1/8". Being in the Philly area at the time, I was literally able to “pull into Nazareth” and get a book-matched Indian rosewood back set from the 1833 Shop to overlay the top.
The original fretboard was replaced with a triple-bound ebony board with 24 medium-jumbo, stainless-steel frets and, of course, banjo-style inlays. There was enough rosewood left to also redo the headstock overlay. The top was then given a “bathtub” route for the pickups and the rear switch cover was re-routed for a 9V battery box.
All the mechanical parts are either lacquered brass or gold-plated. Starting with Dunlop strap locks and an Electrosocket jack, I found a top-load Aria tailpiece with locking studs feeding a harmonica Tune-o-matic bridge sitting on the original stainless-steel sustain block, also with locking studs. A brass pickup surround was mounted along with a brass “flatworm” switch cover. The knobs are Tele-style, and the nut is an original bone/brass nut. The tuners are top-lock Grover 18:1 Rotomatics with imperial buttons.
The electronics start with a stereo jack (to turn on the preamp when plugged in) with three DiMarzio Super 2 pickups, three knob push-pull pots (for coil cuts), and a 5-way selector switch. The fourth knob control (pull-push) turns on the variable 0-20 db preamp. The three remaining switches are for phase reverse, series/parallel switching (when the middle pickup is on), and a switch that overrides the main selector to give a choice of bridge/neck, all three pickups, or the standard 5-way selector.
This has been my main axe for the last 15 years, and obviously you know who my favorite guitarist was.
For these new recreations, Fender focuses on the little things that make original golden-era Fenders objects of obsession.
If there’s one thing players love more than new guitars, it’s old guitars—the unique feel, the design idiosyncrasies, the quirks in finish that all came from the pre-CNC era of instrument manufacturing. These characteristics become the stuff of legend, passed on through the years via rumors and anecdotes in shops, forums, and community networks.
It’s a little difficult to separate fact from fiction given these guitars aren’t easy to get your hands on. Fender Telecasters manufactured in the 1950s and 1960s sell for upwards of $20,000. But old is about to become new again. Fender’s American Vintage II series features 12 year-specific electric guitar and bass models from over two decades, spanning 1951 to 1977, that replicate most specs on their original counterparts, but are produced with modern technologies that ensure uniform build and feel.
Chronologically, the series begins and ends, fittingly, with the Telecaster—starting with the butterscotch blonde, blackguard 1951 Telecaster (built with an ash body, one-piece U-shaped maple neck, and 7.25" radius fretboard) and ending with the 1977 Telecaster Custom, which features a C-shaped neck, a CuNiFe magnet-based Wide Range humbucker in the neck position, and a single-coil at the bridge. The rest of the series spans the highlights of Fender’s repertoire: the 1954 Precision Bass, 1957 Stratocaster in ash or alder, 1960 Precision Bass, 1961 Stratocaster, 1963 Telecaster, 1966 Jazz Bass, 1966 Jazzmaster, 1972 Tele Thinline, 1973 Strat, and 1975 Telecaster Deluxe. The 1951 Telecaster, 1957 Strat, 1961 Strat, and 1966 Jazz Bass will also be offered as left-handed models. Street prices run from $2,099 to $2,399.
Fender '72 American Vintage II Telecaster Thinline Demo | First Look
Spec’d To Please
Every guitar in the series sports the era’s 7.25" radius fretboard, a mostly abandoned spec found on Custom Shop instruments—Mexico-made Vintera models, and Fender’s Artist Series guitars like the Jimmy Page, Jason Isbell, and Albert Hammond Jr. models. Most modern Fenders feature a 9.5" radius, while radii on Gibsons reach upwards of 12". Videos experimenting with the 7.25" radius’ playability pull in tens of thousands of viewers, suggesting both a modern fascination with and a lack of exposure to the radius among some younger and less experienced players.
T.J. Osborne of the Brothers Osborne picks an American Vintage II 1966 Jazzmaster in Dakota red.
Bringing back the polarizing 7.25" radius across the entire series is a gamble, and it’s been nearly five years since Fender released year-specific models. But Fender executive vice president Justin Norvell says that two years ago when the Fender brain trust was conceptualizing the American Vintage II line, they decided the time was right to “go back to the well.”
“We’ve been doing the same [models], the same years, over and over again for 30 years,” says Norvell. “We really wanted to change the line and expand it into some new things that we hadn’t done before and pick some different years that we thought were cool.”
“It takes a lot of doing to go back in time and sort of uncover the secret-sauce recipes.”—Steve Thomas, Fender
To decide on which years to produce, Fender drew from what Norvell calls a “huge cauldron of information” from Custom Shop master builders to collectors with vintage models to former employees from the 1950s and 1960s. The hands-on manufacturing of Fender’s golden years meant guitars produced within the same year would have marked differences in design and finish. So, the team had to procure multiple versions of the same year’s guitar to decide which models to replicate. Norvell says some purists would advocate for the “cleanest, most down-the-middle kind of variant,” while others would push for more esoteric and rare versions. Norvell says that ultimately, the team picked the models that they felt best represented “the throughline of history on our platforms.”
Simple and agile, the Fender Precision Bass—here in its new American Vintage II ’54 incarnation—earned its reputation in the hands of Bill Black, James Jamerson, Donald “Duck” Dunn, and other foundational players.
Norvell says the American Vintage II series was developed, in part, in response to calls to reproduce vintage guitars. Just like with classic cars, he says, people are passionate about year-specific guitars. Plus, American Vintage II fits perfectly with the pandemic-stoked yearning for bygone times. “For some people, these specific years are representative of experiences they had when they were first playing guitar, or a favorite artist that played guitars from these eras,” says Norvell. “These are touchstones for those stories, and that makes them very desirable.”
Cracking Codes
Fender’s electric guitar research and design team, led by director Steve Thomas, dug through the company’s archive of original drawings and designs—dating all the way back to Leo Fender’s original shop in Fullerton, California. They found detailed notes, including some documenting body woods that changed mid-year on certain models. Halfway through 1956, for example, Stratocaster bodies switched from ash to alder. That meant the American Vintage II 1957 Stratocaster needed to be alder, too. That, in turn, meant ensuring enough alder was on hand to fulfill production needs.
Among the series’ Stratocaster recreations is this 1973-style instrument, with an ash body, maple C-profile neck, rosewood fretboard, and the company’s Pure Vintage single-coils.
Thomas and his team discovered another piece of the production puzzle when researching how pickups for that same 1957 Strat were made. “We realized that if we incorporated a little bit more pinch control on the winders, we could more effectively mimic the way pickups would have been hand-wound in the ’50s,” says Thomas. “It takes a lot of doing to go back in time and sort of uncover the secret-sauce recipes.”
Thomas proudly calls the guitars “some of the best instruments we’ve ever made here in the Fender plant,” pointing to the level of detail put into design features, including more delicate lacquer finishes which take longer to cure and dry, and vintage-correct tweed cases for some guitars. New pickups were incorporated in the series, like a reworking of Seth Lover’s famed CuNiFe Wide Range humbuckers, which were discontinued around 1981. Even more minute details, like the width of 12th fret dots and the material used for them, were labored over. Three different models in the line feature clay dot inlays at unique, year-specific spacings.
Ironically, modern CNC manufacturing now makes these design quirks consistent features in mass-produced instruments. While the hand-crafted guitars from the ’50s and ’60s varied a lot from instrument to instrument. “Everything needs to be located perfectly, and it wasn’t necessarily back in the day,” says Norvell. “Now, it can be.”
Don’t Look Back
With this new series so firmly planted in the rose-tinted past, Fender does run the risk of netting only vintage-obsessed players. But Norvell says the team, despite being sticklers for period-correct detail, sought to strike a balance between vintage specs, practicality, and playability. The 1957 Stratocaster, for example, has a 5-way switch rather than the original’s 3-way switch. Norvell also asserts that the “ergonomic” old-school radius feels great when chording. “It might not be [right for] a shred machine, but it feels great and effortless.”
The 1966 Jazz Bass is also represented, shown here in a left-handed version.
Norvell also pushes back on the notion that Fender is playing it safe by indulging nostalgia and leaning on their past successes. He says that while the vintage models are some of the most desirable on the market, the team “purposely did not stick to the safe bets,” citing unusual year models like the 1954 P Bass and the 1973 Stratocaster.
There’s a good reason why anything that hails back to “the good ol’ days” hits home with every generation. We’re constantly plagued by a belief that what came before is better than what we’ve got now. But with the American Vintage II series, Fender makes the case that guitars from the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s can very easily be a relevant part of the 2020s.
Boutique custom shop Messiah Guitars has introduced their first two guitar effects pedals: the Dandelion fuzz drive and Quiggly octofuzz.
The “Dandelion” fuzz drive pedal is a three-knob, high-gain dirt pedal that spans tones from a heavy fuzz to a beefy overdrive, brutalizing all the notes while keeping them decipherable even while strumming the most complicated chord. The wide range tone knob is highly interactive with the other controls to bring you a vast variety of sound quality. Its retro goldenrod color, purple knobs, and stylish dandelion graphics add to the joy – and the purple light-up foot switch replaces the need for a boring LED display light.
“We wanted to make a fuzz drive pedal where you can hear the individual notes in a chord even when they’re heavily distorted,” says Tom Hejda, owner of Messiah Guitars. “Most pedals just squash the notes into a big mess, so you don’t get the complex sound you’re looking for. We found a way to do it differently.
”Messiah’s “Quiggly” octofuzz pedal dares to perfect the Tycho Brahe Octavia pedal made famous by Jimi Hendrix. With a quirky octopus-in-a-sweater design on a vintage robin’s egg blue face, its 3 knobs are bright pink and the light-up foot switches glow red and – in a nod to Hendrix – purple. The innovative pedal preserves the ‘wooliness’ of the Octavia, adding a couple of useful features. The ‘Choke’ knob cleans up the input signal to tame fuzziness when desired, and a second footswitch kicks in the octave on demand.
Each pedal includes:
3-knob controls; space-saving top side jacks; illuminated true bypass footswitches
Durable, cast aluminum alloy 125B enclosure with fun artwork
Easy to see, illuminated true bypass footswitches
Standard 9V pedal power input and internal 9V battery operation
A software recreation of Strymon's best-selling BigSky hardware reverb.
The plugin features 12 custom reverb algorithms, with traditional physical spaces like rooms and halls joining unique filtered and pitched ambient machines. With Infinite hold/Freezefunctionality, jaw-dropping sound quality, and industry-leading flexibility, the new BigSky plugin offers DAW users a powerful new tool for creating ambient textures.
Multidimensional Reverb Plugin: The new BigSky plugin from Strymon is a direct port of Strymon's best-selling hardware pedal, bringing all of the functionality, uniqueness, and pristine sound quality of the original to your favorite DAW. Now you can use as many instances of Big Sky in your session as you’d like, using it to add simple Room ambiance to a drum kit while wholly transforming a string pad with the Shimmer or Chorale machines. With 12 custom-tuned reverb algorithms that cover everything from traditional acoustic spaces to wildly creative ambient machines, Infinite/Freeze functionality, and a dynamically simple user interface, the BigSky plugin is destined to become your new secret weapon in the studio.
Product Highlights:
12 custom-tuned reverb algorithms, perfect for a variety of sound sources.
Traditional high-resolution algorithms like Rooms, Halls, Plates, and Springs.
Entirely new and transformative reverb machines featuring pitch shifting, filtering, tunable room ambiance, and more.
Easily add modulation to any reverb machine.
Infinite and Freeze functionality with Hold, to create undulating soundscapes.
Easy-to-use dynamic interface puts every parameter right where you need it, so dialing in killer sounds is quick and easy.
Resizable user interface with four sizes to choose from (and big is BIG).
Strymon BigSky Plugin - Acoustic Performance
The new BigSky plugin comes in AAX, AU, and VST3 formats, and is available directly from Strymon and at select retailers worldwide, for $199 US. For more information, please visit strymon.net.
The special edition pedals feature the artwork of Cleveland artist Anthony Zart and come in limited designs and colors.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has teamed up with EarthQuaker Devices (EQD), the Akron-based guitar pedal manufacturer for a collaboration that features a series of limited design and colorway guitar pedals.
The first pedal of the collaboration, Plumes, was released as an online exclusive item. With few still available, it is a unique, all-analog approach to a classic tube-like overdrive circuit offering 3 different clipping voices, loads of headroom and almost three-dimensional clarity that will push your amp over the edge.
The second pedal, the Hizumitas, is a Fuzz Sustainar originally designed for guitar player Wata from the legendary band Boris. The heavy distortion and smooth sustain, combined with an underlying grit was designed to offer unmatched clarity that is unsuspected a typically aggressive sounding pedal.
“Effect pedals are a massive part of guitar driven rock and roll,” said Rock Hall President and CEO Greg Harris. “Throughout the years, Inductees ranging from Jimi Hendrix to The Edge have relied on effects pedals to craft their own unique sound. Thanks to EarthQuaker Devices, we invite you to shred with us at home or inside the Museum’s Jam Room using our limited-edition guitar pedal.”
The pedals feature the hypnotizing artwork of Cleveland artist Anthony Zart. “Seeing a project like this one come to fruition — especially when collaborating with Northeast Ohio pedal manufacturer EarthQuaker Devices— is a very gratifying experience. Factor in an iconic museum? That’s icing on the cake” said Zart.
