Fender Custom Shop Limited Edition '69 Stratocaster Heavy Relic Electric Guitar, Dirty Shell Pink

For something that's truly gonna turn your usual Strat on its head, we have this Fender Custom Shop Limited Edition '69 Stratocaster Heavy Relic in a perfectly peculiar Dirty Shell Pink. When we talk about Fender Custom Shop guitars, we're not usually talking about a lineup of specifications this unique, but wouldn't you know it, that's what we're doing today. With some one-of-a-kind aesthetics, inverted shapes and specs, and a tone too true to deny, this '69 Stratocaster is a particularly special limited edition model.

With a limited edition model like this, there's truly so much to chew on. Let's start his whole rundown off with its two-piece guitar and bass alder body. This alder pick punches in with its "sorted for weight" quality, where, when being built, a builder will select a body for its lightest weight among a lot. Alder, already respectably light and resonant, makes an excellent base off which the rest of this limited edition Custom Shop experience leaps. This '69 Strat is wrapped in a Dirty Shell Pink lacquer finish. Particularly washed out, this worn Shell Pink lacquer works with a Fender Custom Shop Heavy Relic finish treatment with heavy paint checking to impose some classy age and aesthetic damage to the guitar right off the bat. Through this Dirty Shell Pink, we get a peek at the alder cut underneath.

Here, this Fender Custom Shop brings on a 5/4 quartersawn maple neck in a 1969 "U" profile. This quartersawn maple is treated to a particularly dark tint finish that dips its look into a more aged and affected aesthetic. This neck shapes itself into a 1969 "U" profile that measures from .850" thick at the first fret to .910" at the twelfth. 1969 "U", the slimmest of Fender Custom Shop "U" profiles, fills the hand with a fairly chunky, rounded feel that balances the authenticity of vintage "U" necks with a touch more thinness and modernity for playability. This neck fills to a fingerboard lined with twenty-one 6105 Narrow Tall frets for more pronounced articulation from the wire's slightly taller height. An added element of modernity for this distinctly vintage Strat, this fingerboard measures with a compound measurement moving from a round 7.25" to a flatter 9.50" from the nut heading toward the body.

Sonically, this limited edition Custom Shop breaks through with a heated set of electronics. Onboard, this model loads in three different Stratocaster single-coils to make for a truly unique and diverse sonic palette to create with. In the neck position, this Custom Shop features a hand-wound 69 Strat single-coil. In the middle, a hand-wound Fat '50s Strat. Rounding out this configuration, this Custom Shop features a hand-wound Texas Special Strat single-coil in the bridge for one of the Custom Shop's hottest Strat single-coil picks. These bright and punchy pickups are shaped through the guitar's Vintage Modified Strat #2 wiring with an onboard Tone Saver bleed that retains signal clarity no matter how you shape these pickups with their 250K 10% split taper pots.

Really pushing this limited Strat over the edge, we have a couple of unique specifications topping this whole deal off. First, we have a Custom Shop Vintage Strat tremolo bridge and a bone nut found at either end of the scale. Okay, maybe not too exciting yet, but what if we focus in at the nut end a little closer? Sharp-eyed readers might notice one thing: This Custom Shop's large-style reverse headstock. For fans of Fenders that are truly off-the-wall, take the road less traveled, or have that certain Hendrix je ne sais quoi, here you have it. In the style of more '70s-era Fenders and fitted with Schaller F-Key tuning machines, this headstock is really something to steal the spotlight. If that wasn't enough, its Malmsteen-style, '70s-reminiscent, inverted headstock decals might be. This limited edition Fender Custom Shop '69 Stratocaster travels with an included Strat/Tele Black hardshell case.

Things aren't always as stuck in their box as they seem. Even in discussions of the Fender Custom Shop, there's still plenty of wildness to indulge in, if you feel so inclined. Grab hold of this limited edition Strat to really get what we mean.