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Post subject: Buying a Fender during the 1950's & other questions
Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2014 7:43 am
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Who were these people in the 1950's ordering custom colored strats, only not to play them and leave them under the bed for 40+ years?

I imagine in the mid 1950's in North America it would have been harder to distribute information about Fender guitars and that they would have been expensive to procure.

Were the guys that were ordering Tahitian Coral & Taos Turquoise and other unusual strats likely to have had already purchased sunburst strats before hand?

How far and wide was Fender distributing strats in North American from 1954 - 1959, did they have logistics to get their guitars to every mom and pop store back then, or was it only a few key dealers? During what years did Fender start to distribute to UK & Australia?

During the 1960's during the transition years, were people ordering strats expecting one thing and getting another? so say its January 1966 and you are looking at a dealer catalog from 1964, and your strat shows up with a different headstock, decal and tuners, what did the guys make of that back then?


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Post subject: Re: Buying a Fender during the 1950's & other questions
Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2014 9:09 am
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My understanding is when the Strat was introduced in 1954, you could get it in one finish - sunburst. Fender was pretty limited in what they offered for custom colors in the 50s. The 60s was a whole different ballgame.


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Post subject: Re: Buying a Fender during the 1950's & other questions
Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2014 9:35 am
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In the '50s and '60s sunburst was the only standard Strat color and all other colors had to be custom ordered. That doesn't mean a customer had to go into a store, place a special order, then wait for the guitar to be built (although that did happen). More often, stores ordered custom colors "on spec" and hung them on their walls waiting for a customer to buy them. But stores back then weren't like Guitar Center -- they might have one red Strat and one sunburst Strat.

The Custom Color upcharge was 5%, and since many stores had Custom Colors in stock you didn't have to be a super-serious hardcore player to buy one. Just like today, there were people who were just starting to play and decided to start with a really good guitar, then lost interest and put the guitar under a bed or in the closet. And just like today, there were people who started out as serious players then pretty much stopped playing when they started having kids and getting real jobs.

There was a guitar craze in the '50s and '60s -- every piano store and band instrument store started selling electric guitars. Fender sales reps would travel around the country with their cars loaded with brochures and demo instruments, and they'd take orders for as few or as many guitars/basses as the dealer wanted to sell.

I know that Fender instruments were fairly hard to get in the UK and Australia until the '70s, but I don't know any more than that.


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Post subject: Re: Buying a Fender during the 1950's & other questions
Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2014 11:04 am
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strayedstrater wrote:
I know that Fender instruments were fairly hard to get in the UK and Australia until the '70s, but I don't know any more than that.

Don't know about Australia, but that's not quite right regarding the UK.

During the post-war years Britain for a while had a highly protectionist policy towards imported goods, the idea being to help domestic manufacturing recover after the devastation of the Second World War. While the absence of foreign competition meant that British amplifier making took off and flourished with the likes of Marshall, Vox, Laney, Sound City, HiWatt, etc etc etc, the same did not occur with guitar manufacturing, and all the domestic guitar companies of that era ultimately failed as soon as more desirable things came along.

Fender was a young, small company in the '50s and didn't even try to export to places where high import tariffs would make them prohibitively expensive, and so they were not available in the UK and most other places in their first years.

The legend is that the very first Stratocaster in the UK was one ordered in 1959 by Cliff Richard for his Shadows guitarist, Hank Marvin. It was Fiesta Red, and ever since that finish has had a special popularity in Britain.

Hank got his red Strat in March 1959. Shortly afterwards bilateral import restrictions were progressively relaxed, so that by the mid-late-'60s Fenders were flooding in and Marshalls flooding out. The outcome being that today both companies are the biggest in the world in their respective fields. Trade is good.

Cheers - C

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Post subject: Re: Buying a Fender during the 1950's & other questions
Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2014 4:53 am
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KPI wrote:
Who were these people in the 1950's ordering custom colored strats, only not to play them and leave them under the bed for 40+ years?

I imagine in the mid 1950's in North America it would have been harder to distribute information about Fender guitars and that they would have been expensive to procure.

Were the guys that were ordering Tahitian Coral & Taos Turquoise and other unusual strats likely to have had already purchased sunburst strats before hand?

How far and wide was Fender distributing strats in North American from 1954 - 1959, did they have logistics to get their guitars to every mom and pop store back then, or was it only a few key dealers? During what years did Fender start to distribute to UK & Australia?

During the 1960's during the transition years, were people ordering strats expecting one thing and getting another? so say its January 1966 and you are looking at a dealer catalog from 1964, and your strat shows up with a different headstock, decal and tuners, what did the guys make of that back then?

Some of your same questions have occured to me as well.....who in 1957 special ordered a turquoise strat?
Apparently some did, Ive seen examples of some strange colors.
I mean your not only going with a Strat that was a relatively new concept in guitar but you also want a custom color?
Thats really blazing the trail.
As far as distribution,I knew an old gentleman who owned a '54 Strat (the only one Ive ever seen in person....a sunburst beauty) he said that his brother and he bought the first two that hit Spokane Washington....I remember being a little surprised two instruments from the first run ended up that far from California in their first year.
(I guess his brother's '54 was stolen in 1962)


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Post subject: Re: Buying a Fender during the 1950's & other questions
Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2014 6:58 am
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Remember many, many Fenders back in the 50's were played by Country artists. A lot of the musicians backing them had to wear uniforms and some of said artists dictated what color guitar to play. I think that probably accounts for some of those special order 50's color Strats.

And of course some of those same country artists, wanted a different color to help them standout even more. Bill Carson had a guitar painted in a weird redish color for himself. They called it "Cimmeron Red" because it was the color of a ballroom he played in Oklahoma! They reproduced this color when they issue the "Bill Carson" model Strat. So the players liked to be a bit different back in the day too!

T2

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Post subject: Re: Buying a Fender during the 1950's & other questions
Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2014 8:43 am
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Read Tom Wheeler's book and all will be clear:

http://www.amazon.com/Stratocaster-Chro ... er+guitars

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Post subject: Re: Buying a Fender during the 1950's & other questions
Posted: Mon Feb 10, 2014 7:34 am
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Not to mention the fact that in the 50's and 60's, the US was the car culture of the world, many of the car colors were used on the guitars....
What's not to like about a matching 56 Chevy and Stratocaster ...???

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Post subject: Re: Buying a Fender during the 1950's & other questions
Posted: Tue Feb 11, 2014 12:02 am
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bluesky636 wrote:
Read Tom Wheeler's book and all will be clear


+1

Richard Smith's "Fender - The Sound Heard 'Round The World" also provides some excellent insight to how the guitars were marketed and the motivation behind the custom-color craze.

Arjay

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Post subject: Re: Buying a Fender during the 1950's & other questions
Posted: Tue Feb 11, 2014 7:24 am
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T2Stratman wrote:
Remember many, many Fenders back in the 50's were played by Country artists. A lot of the musicians backing them had to wear uniforms and some of said artists dictated what color guitar to play. I think that probably accounts for some of those special order 50's color Strats.

And of course some of those same country artists, wanted a different color to help them standout even more. Bill Carson had a guitar painted in a weird redish color for himself. They called it "Cimmeron Red" because it was the color of a ballroom he played in Oklahoma! They reproduced this color when they issue the "Bill Carson" model Strat. So the players liked to be a bit different back in the day too!

T2



Which makes we wish we saw more of the basses survive if they were ever brought in on the uniform concept. We know there were some more out there custom color P's and J's done. However, they seem to be few and far between in comparison. Whether it's because they didn't survive, or simply got refined I've always been curious. It would seem odd to have your Tele and Strat match, but leave the bass out of it, imo. Especially as sharp as they all look together on a stage.

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Post subject: Re: Buying a Fender during the 1950's & other questions
Posted: Tue Feb 11, 2014 4:39 pm
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TheKingofPain wrote:
Which makes we wish we saw more of the basses survive if they were ever brought in on the uniform concept. We know there were some more out there custom color P's and J's done. However, they seem to be few and far between in comparison. Whether it's because they didn't survive, or simply got refined I've always been curious. It would seem odd to have your Tele and Strat match, but leave the bass out of it, imo. Especially as sharp as they all look together on a stage.


Image

It may sound crazy to bassists today, but stand up acoustic basses were dominant into the 1960's in all genres, even R&B, rock and pop which today are genre's in which you hardly ever see an upright acoustic. Electric Bass took a while to catch on.

Image

James Jamerson, noted as one of the best if not the greatest electric bassist of all time, actually used his German upright acoustic and not a Precision for more than a few Motown sessions even though he had a perfectly good P-Bass available. In addition to the undated Stevie Wonder session pictured above, which surely was after 1961 when Wonder signed with Motown's Tamla label, "(Love Is Like A) Heatwave" (1963 by Martha Reeves & The Vandellas) was the German upright along with many other Motown hits that featured Jamerson on bass. When playing electric Jamerson played with the neck in a more vertical position when standing with the headstock closer to his head than most players today because it felt more natural to him.

The dominance of upright acoustics and the slow growth of the Fender bass accounts for part of the answer to why there are fewer surviving custom color Fender 50's and early 60's basses. There were far, far fewer electric basses than electric guitars in use then, therefore fewer vintage ones now. There still are fewer basses than guitars sold. Some players like Motown's Jamerson were reluctant to completely abandon their faithful upright acoustics even long after getting a P-Bass. It is likely some considered their uprights their primary instrument and the electric more of a necessary evil than an instrument that they actually wanted to play.

One of the first notable rock and roll bassists to start playing a Fender P-Bass at all was Bill Black (pictured in the first photo above playing his upright acoustic with Elvis.) Here Bill is setup to play with his first P-Bass, a 1956 model:

Image

I'd credit Bill Black as doing more to popularize the Fender Precision among professional players in the early days than anyone else. He really didn't start playing electric much until 1956. Before Black's conversion the Fender P-Bass was viewed by working bassists as more novelty than a real world option. Early bass amps were anemic which had not helped Fender Bass popularity among pro bassists. The amp situation improved immensely with the 56 Bassman, which also was the amp Bill Black used and you can see it behind Elvis's right foot.

Image

After Bill Black went electric others followed his lead in pop and rock adopting the Fender electric bass. These other players converting was not like flipping a switch though and the adoption of the Fender electric bass was a slow and gradual process. The redesigned P-Bass of 1957 attracted more electric converts also.

Converting popular country players to a Fender electric bass was a much slower process and it was not until the mid 60's that electrics finally began to catch on in popular country bands, and they were not always Fender electric basses either. As late as the mid 1970's traditional country outfits such as Porter Wagoner's band seen here with Dolly Parton up front on Porter's weekly TV show were still fronting standup acoustic basses. (The longtime bassist for Porter Wagoner seen here was Speck Rhodes, who also provided much comic relief on the TV show. I never missed the Porter Wagoner Show, but do not count Speck Rhodes as much of an influence since I never played acoustic upright. He could be quite funny though with his upper bridge denture out.)

Image

While pop, rock and popular country players of today are almost exclusively electric, other genres remain almost exclusively acoustic upright domains. Jazz, big band and various folk genres like Bluegrass among them. I don't think electrics will ever replace uprights in these classic genres in the long run either.

Cutting edge sub-genres like Progressive Bluegrass, such as the Earl Scruggs Revue project in 1973, have been a trial marriage of sorts for electric bass and traditional American folk styles. Yet almost everyone with a banjo or fiddle in the mix reverted back to acoustic upright basses by the end of the 70's. It is about time for the cycle to repeat again though.


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Post subject: Re: Buying a Fender during the 1950's & other questions
Posted: Tue Feb 11, 2014 8:47 pm
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We've had a great deal of conversation regarding custom colors in the past. Much will be gleaned from the two books recommended. I remember custom colors being offered in the catalogs of the late 50's. The company was using DuPont automobile paints and their were a small number of options. It was also the practice to overspray a sunburst guitar when a custom order was requested. This is why we are seeing a trend toward oversprayed 'relic' finishes in the current interest in new 'old' guitars. A prime example of the truth of that is in David Gilmour's Black Strat which was, itself, an oversprayed sunburst, and why the relic version is produced as such.

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Post subject: Re: Buying a Fender during the 1950's & other questions
Posted: Tue Feb 11, 2014 8:56 pm
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ZZDoc wrote:
I remember custom colors being offered in the catalogs of the late 50's.


+1

Gold hardware was also an option on selected models.

Arjay

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Post subject: Re: Buying a Fender during the 1950's & other questions
Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2014 7:51 am
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I'm up on the P's history. I could have sworn I read a book where Fullerton claims that they did exist in small numbers. I wouldn't expect to see many first generation P's in CCs. I agree that with the aforementioned Bill Black, Marshall Grant, and others moving to Fenders in the later 50's that it had a lot to do with the instrument getting a burst of acceptance. Rock bands back then still dressed classy. (I always think of this photo of Waylon Jennings backing up Buddy Holly on a Precision for some reason. :( )

Image

What I mean is. After this time period, and before The Beatles. Rock became more manufactured, right? The bland sort of industry pushed stuff. Those artists still used rock bands to back them on the road. I'm sure they didnt use uprights. Also, that type of industry control would lead to things like matching suits, and guitars I'd think. So I'd think there must have been a couple pumped out for the uniform style of dress. Maybe not. I'm talking about those 59 to 63 era P's and early J's.

However, even if they were made in extremely small numbers like Fullerton hinted at. Why did so few survive? Was it because they were ordered by or for working musicians and they eventually failed and were destroyed or refined? To me that would seem likely as I don't think there would be many shop owners wanting to gamble the additional 5% on an instrument they didn't even know if they could move. (as opposed to the popular guitar)

I forget which book it was. However, I'm pretty sure I remember there being an interview or passage referencing Fullerton saying that custom basses did happen. Just very, very rarely.

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Post subject: Re: Buying a Fender during the 1950's & other questions
Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2014 8:53 pm
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[quote="TheKingofPain"]Image

Before the days when spare picks were taped to the mike boom, you stashed 'one' away under the pickguard. 8) 8)

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