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Post subject: Re: The First Signature Guitar?
Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2015 8:54 am
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ZZDoc wrote:
sfceric64 wrote: both Burton and Beck were the 1st artists that fender talked w/ but the EC was the 1st made and available followed closely by the Malmsteen.In that regard suggest you learn about Alex Gregory.


Hard to learn about someone you've never heard of.....A few minutes on Google later, oh you mean this guy;

Gregory’s pioneering work in this arena put him in partnership with the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation in the mid-1980s, when Gregory became the third signature artist signed by the company (after Eric Clapton and Yngwie Malmsteen). A pair of early prototype seven-string Stratocaster® guitars bearing Gregory’s signature was built and displayed at the January 1988 NAMM show in Anaheim, Calif., and the guitar was listed in the January 1988 Fender price list. The design was finalized in spring 1988. The guitar never went into full-scale production, however, except for a seven-string Squier® Stratocaster run in the late 1990s and a small number of Custom Shop instruments built over the years.

I usually always learn something in these boards, thanks.

arth1 wrote:
Mary Kaye (Mary Kay is the cosmetics), and yes, it does count because it was a limited edition in 1956 promoted by the Mary Kaye Trio, and what was special was that it had gold hardware.


Aside from the spelling errors, I'll agree it is a special guitar. But Fender didn't start the artist series until after the CBS buyout and anything prior to CBS was run on a more personal level w/o the idea of selling products endorsed by artists. Although it would be foolish to believe those early artists who chose Fender products didn't influence millions of sales/players.


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Post subject: Re: The First Signature Guitar?
Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2015 9:44 am
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arth1 wrote:
Aside from the spelling errors, I'll agree it is a special guitar. But Fender didn't start the artist series until after the CBS buyout and anything prior to CBS was run on a more personal level w/o the idea of selling products endorsed by artists. Although it would be foolish to believe those early artists who chose Fender products didn't influence millions of sales/players.


Well put. At the time Eric was using the Signature Series prototypes professionally, Buddy Guy is seen, in video, on stage with Eric, but playing a Guild Bluesbird. Didn't take long for Fender to make Buddy Guy an offer he couldn't refuse. :wink:

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Post subject: Re: The First Signature Guitar?
Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2015 10:07 am
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Those first few years of the Bill Schultz era were pivotal to Fenders success. They realized how important certain players contributions to guitar player history were and how many had slipped away unsigned/sponsored. I was surprised that the Strat Chronicles didn't even have a mention of Alex Gregory anywhere in the book.


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Post subject: Re: The First Signature Guitar?
Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2015 10:32 am
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BMW-KTM wrote:
JM is certainly an odd duck. Openly speaking about his masturbation habits is enough all by itself right there to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that something's not right in the kitchen. And that's just the opening volley. There is so much one could point out.

He is strange. It is a fact. Period.

That being said, there is no denying the man can play a mean guitar and in any genre I would ever care to listen to, he shines equally well. Great writing too. The music biz is replete with bat-shit crazy, mad men geniuses. I'm not sure why this one guy gets singled out for ridicule the way he does when there are others even crazier.


By JM, I take it you mean John Mayer?
I think it's a lack of charisma. There are others with an abrasive personality (the black knight springs to mind), but with far more elegance and flair. John Mayer seems to have the elegance and eloquence of a pig. He may deliver the bacon, but do you want him to?

Yngwie Malmsteen also suffers from appearing as a vainglorious rectum, but one who certainly can play. But it doesn't help, because he's dismissed out of hand by many based on his total lack of charisma.
Some might not like his music style, but have no problem when Uli Jon Roth plays a similar kind of music. Because Uli has charisma. They're both incredible guitar players, but if I were to be honest, I think YJM might have the edge. I'd still pick Uli any day.

Yes, there are many weird ones. I think you have to be at least somewhat weird to pour enough effort into becoming a guitar god.


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Post subject: Re: The First Signature Guitar?
Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2015 1:52 pm
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arth1 wrote:
I think it's a lack of charisma.

I've always considered his problem as an excess of 'clone-isma'. From his vocals/guitar-face to his choice of instrument. He's a Dave Matthew's/SRV hybrid with no unique image/personna of his own to project. He can play a killer guitar, blue in particular, when he chooses to, but his choice of song styles, and his following, bring back echoes of 'bubble gum' music. You look a Joe Bonamassa's audience and see a completely different face, aficionados of the kind of music he plays. Not a line of lovelies, salivating in the front row.

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Post subject: Re: The First Signature Guitar?
Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2015 3:05 pm
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I feel the same way about Bonamassa as some do about JM.
Good player, no question, but he does nothing for me.

I have zero music in my library by either one of them.

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Post subject: Re: The First Signature Guitar?
Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2015 8:35 pm
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ZZDoc wrote:
I've always considered his problem as an excess of 'clone-isma'. From his vocals/guitar-face to his choice of instrument. He's a Dave Matthew's/SRV hybrid with no unique image/personna of his own to project.

That's how I feel about Kenny Wayne Shepherd. He appears like a mix between SRV and Taylor Swift, and fails at being KWS.
I would guess that the KWS signature strat sells more because it has go-faster-stripes than because it's a KWS signature.

Which brings me over to how most artist models aren't anything special at all. There are exceptions like YJM scalloped fretboard and Jim Root minimalism, but most of them are pretty standard models, with so little to distinguish them that an audience won't even know. Some of the things that make artist models "special" like neck shape or a hardtail are things that a customer should be able to specify anyhow, at least through the Fender Design Experience web site. There's no need for those artist models - there's really nothing artist special about them.


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Post subject: Re: The First Signature Guitar?
Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2015 6:46 am
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arth1 wrote:
Some of the things that make artist models "special" like neck shape or a hardtail are things that a customer should be able to specify anyhow, at least through the Fender Design Experience web site. There's no need for those artist models - there's really nothing artist special about them.

Would that one could, but the Clapton neck is not available on anything but that guitar, and even the Design Experience has a limited number of options. It's nothing like that peg board of master necks hanging in the Custom Shop.

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Post subject: Re: The First Signature Guitar?
Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2015 9:52 am
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The first signature guitar Fender made was Stu Hamm's Bass I believe?

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Post subject: Re: The First Signature Guitar?
Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2015 12:30 pm
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Sarigul wrote:
The first signature guitar Fender made was Stu Hamm's Bass I believe?


The first contracts went to Clapton and Malmsteen. Clapton's guitar was marketed in May '88. Malmsteen's in Sept '88.

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Post subject: Re: The First Signature Guitar?
Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2015 6:37 pm
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ZZDoc wrote:
The first contracts went to Clapton and Malmsteen. Clapton's guitar was marketed in May '88. Malmsteen's in Sept '88.


According to George Gruhn, the Jimi Hendrix model came out in 1980, and a Homer Haynes model in early 1988, but given that they were not signing anything in the 80s on account of not being alive, the first artist contract seems to have been Mary Kaye, with two different models in 1987[*]. Which would be earlier than Slowhand and Lasse.

[*]: Not to be confused with the original Mary Kaye Band endorsed guitar back in the 50s, which some believe shouldn't count, as it wasn't marketed as a Mary Kaye model, only advertised by the Mary Kaye band.


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Post subject: Re: The First Signature Guitar?
Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 12:45 pm
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arth1 wrote:
ZZDoc wrote:
The first contracts went to Clapton and Malmsteen. Clapton's guitar was marketed in May '88. Malmsteen's in Sept '88.


According to George Gruhn, the Jimi Hendrix model came out in 1980, and a Homer Haynes model in early 1988, but given that they were not signing anything in the 80s on account of not being alive, the first artist contract seems to have been Mary Kaye, with two different models in 1987[*]. Which would be earlier than Slowhand and Lasse.

[*]: Not to be confused with the original Mary Kaye Band endorsed guitar back in the 50s, which some believe shouldn't count, as it wasn't marketed as a Mary Kaye model, only advertised by the Mary Kaye band.


Tom Wheeler, in his discussion of Artist Series models in his 'Stratocaster Chronicles' gives the same weight to your comments about the guitar associated with the Mary Kaye 'endorsement' advert, as well as the Hendrix model of 1980. Fender has endeavored to make so much 'hay', so to speak, with several incarnations of guitars carrying the Hendrix mystique, that I would hardly group those into category of a 'signature' or 'artist' model, in the sense of what the term was intended to represent.

There's no mention whatsoever of Homer Haynes, or the 1987 Mary Kaye models.

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Post subject: Re: The First Signature Guitar?
Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 2:18 pm
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ZZDoc wrote:
There's no mention whatsoever of Homer Haynes, or the 1987 Mary Kaye models.

Wheeler might have the Homer Haynes model listed as H.L.E., which stood for Haynes Limited Edition. Here's a specimen:

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Post subject: Re: The First Signature Guitar?
Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 3:17 pm
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arth1 wrote:
Wheeler might have the Homer Haynes model listed as H.L.E., which stood for Haynes Limited Edition.

Not a whisper of a reference in his book.

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Post subject: Re: The First Signature Guitar?
Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 6:34 pm
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...lessee if the memory kicks in......first bonafide Fender Signature guitar was the Clapton.....I do remember setting up a couple "tryouts" while still in the Fender Fullerton factory in early 85.....I also remember that it took pretty much a year to actually produce --even after all of the T's were crossed and the 'I's" were dotted, and that dealers were waiting in line for their first deliveries.
The Beck was under discussion in 86-87 or so.....I remember going with Dan Smith to the Country Club in Reseda, Ca with some Strat plus samples for Jeff to try out (he was shooting a Mick Jagger solo vid with Terry Bozzio on drums...so whenever THAT was)....and remember that (Dan said) he liked 'em ok, but really didn't need the locking tuners as he just tuned as he played ;o). The Malmsteen DID come next I recall...but again production was slow getting off the ground.....(scalloped necks aint fun...). WHY produce a signature? Why endorse. That's pretty much it...lotsa good reasons.

Nice H.L.E. pic!! The H.L.E. and Mary Kays were Custom Shop Limiteds as I recall, so not "sigged"

Hope you all have a nice Thanksgiving!!
cheers,
rob

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