Fender Custom Shop

In 1987 the Fender Custom Shop was officially established at the Corona plant. It was started so that Fender could build one-offs and special orders for players who had the money and the inclination. While this role remains — customers have ranged from Chet Atkins to Lou Reed — they now has a much wider part to play in Fender's expanding business.

Their activities today effectively divide into three. First there are the one offs, or Fender Custom Shop Masterbuilt Guitars as they are known around the shop. These Custom Shop Stratocaster and Telecaster models are exactly what most people would understand as the work of a custom shop: instruments made by one person with acute attention to detail and a price to match. The second type is the Limited Edition, a special numbered run of anything from a handful to several hundred of a specific model. Third, Fender Custom Shop makes a general line of "catalog" models which it calls Stock Team (or, more personally, Custom Team) items, normally introduced after a style of model has proved popular in one-off requests.

One of the first jobs for the Fender Custom Shop was to make a yellow Vintage reissue Strat for Jeff Beck. At this stage Beck vetoed Fender's wish to produce a Jeff Beck signature edition Strat, and the design intended for that purpose evolved into the Strat Plus. A Jeff Beck signature Stratocaster not dissimilar to the Plus finally appeared in 1991. Signature instruments now form an important part of the Fender Custom Shop line.

The first was the Eric Clapton Stratocaster. Clapton had asked Fender to make him a guitar with the distinct V-shape neck of his favorite 1930s Martin acoustic guitar, as well as what he described as a "compressed" pickup sound. Various prototypes were built by George Blanda at Fender, and the final design eventually went on sale to the public in 1988.

In 1988 they produced the 40th Anniversary Telecaster, its first limited-edition production run. At that time most players and collectors (and Fender itself) believed that the first Broadcaster/Telecaster had been produced in 1948, hence the timing of the anniversary model. John Page, head of the Fender Custom Shop, says that it took some 18 months to build the full edition of 300 guitars — and then many Fender dealers were upset because the company only made 300. So Fender Custom Shop's next limited run: the HLE Stratocaster (Haynes Limited Edition), was upped to 500 units. Other numbered runs continued to appear from the Fender Custom Shop and became an important part of Fender Custom Shop's job.

A logical extension to the limited editions occurred in 1992 with the Fender Custom Shop's first catalog of standard products — which it now groups together under the general headings of Stock Team and Custom Team guitars. No production limit is put on these models other than the confines of the Shop's capacity. They include models such as the Carved Top Strat, the Set Neck Strat and the Robben Ford guitars, in series such as Custom Classics, Showmasters, and Time Machines. The expansion of the Custom Shop's business prompted a move in 1993 to new buildings (but still close to the Corona factory) to gain extra space and improve efficiency.