Fender Custom Shop Limited Edition '59 Stratocaster HSS Relic Electric Guitar, Daphne Blue Metallic

Come closer and gaze into the crystalline world of this Fender Custom Shop Limited Edition '59 Stratocaster HSS Relic in a dazzling Daphne Blue Metallic! For something to really turn your traditional Custom Shop Strat experience on its head, this limited release model coalesces with unique materials and specifications, electronics to make your head spin, and aesthetics to make you truly look twice. Introspective, intriguing, and inverted, this limited edition Custom Shop Strat is one to get lost in.

For its limited edition releases, the Fender Custom Shop is known to pull out a stop or two. This begins with a two-piece guitar and bass alder body with an off-center, treble-side seam. The classic Fender alder pick punches in with a balanced and resonant sonic palette as so many Fenders of the past have. "Sorted for weight," this Custom Shop's alder body also holds the distinction of being selected during assembly for its light weight, resulting in a Strat landing just under eight pounds. The '60 Strat-style body works wonderfully as a musical base in addition to its role as a canvas that a Fender Custom Shop Relic finish treatment is splashed upon. With a Daphne Blue Metallic color and a Relic-level wear treatment, this Custom Shop Strat exhibits tasteful wear and age with some spots of underlying alder peeking through.

Offering an effortlessly playable experience alongside its eye-popping body, this limited edition Strat features a quartersawn AA flame maple neck in a 11/56 Off-Center "V" profile. This Strat's neck fills the playing hand uniquely in a few ways. First, the neck features an unfinished Relic back that really translates the feel of the maple into the palm. Second, this neck's profile is an asymmetrical "V," unlike your other "V" profiles. Lastly, this neck features custom dimensions as it measures from a slim .820" at the first fret to a more prominent .950" at the twelfth.

This neck continues on joined by a dark-tinted flat lam slab AAA rosewood fingerboard. The board, connecting with a lush feel on the fingers, is lined with twenty-one frets utilizing Fender's 6105 fret wire. Twenty-one Narrow Tall-sized frets line up along the length of the board with enhanced articulation due to the wire's thinner and higher size. Playability is then pushed even further with a compound fingerboard radius measuring from a more vintage and rounded 7.25" near the nut and a modern, flattened 9.5" toward the body.

All this talk of playability and we haven't even touched the electronics. It's with the Custom Shop's limited edition models that we get interesting, seldom-seen mixes like this. Let's talk about it. Onboard, this Fender Custom Shop Strat features a setup of two different types of electronics. The first type, we have a hand-wound Fat '60s Strat single-coil pickup in the middle and neck positions. Summoning all the full shimmer and sparkle you've come to know from vintage Strats, these two pickups are classics alongside the middle pickup's hum-cancelling reverse-wound, reverse-polarity design.

These two sparkly single-coils are matched with a guest appearance from a Seymour Duncan '59 SH-1 humbucker in the bridge. With four-conductor wiring and a Relic nickel cover, this humbucker breaks the mold for a crispy, chunky edge irresistible to teetering tubes. 250K 10% split taper potentiometers and Fender's Postmodern HSS Strat wiring land with this model for an untraditional Master Volume and Master Tone Strat control design with a nickel button plug.

Backing up all these great electronics, this limited Custom Shop has a robust hardware setup. This Custom Shop Strat features first a Vintage Stratocaster tremolo bridge for expressive vibrato bends. At the scale's opposite end, intonation and tuning accuracy are retained with a bone nut and Vintage-Style tuning machines. Smaller aesthetic appointments also join in around here with a Fender Custom Shop limited edition stamped neckplate and headstock decal. This Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster travels with an included Strat/Tele Brown hardshell case.

It's hard to tell the future. However difficult it might be, you can bet on a Strat being just as cool (if not cooler) years from now as it is today. Might as well double down on such an off-the-wall Strat like this then, right?