Determining the Production Year of a Vintage Fender Stratocaster: Custom Colors

by DAN YABLONKA

Part Three, Custom Colors

In Parts One and Two, I discussed the differences in eras by neck shapes, fingerboards, serial numbers and logos, and while the title of the article is about determining the year of your Strat, the topic "du jour" is a little less about dating and a little more about "custom" features such as Custom Colors, so highly revered by collectors, gold-plated parts, and custom neck widths.

Having said that, there are a few hints at dating and history that can be determined by Custom Colors. For example, while Custom Colors were made available in the sixties pre-CBS catalogs, they were not offered publicly until 1956 when advertising literature referred to them as a "player's choice" option with a 5 percent surcharge. Custom Color Strats from the fifties were usually the result of a direct contact with the factory - guitars of factory employees or friends thereof who were privy to such benefits, or the occasional walk-in customer with a fist full of cash.

Early Custom Colors

A prime example of a relatively early Custom Color Strat is Bill Carson's '57 Cimarron Red Stratocaster. Carson, as mentioned in my earlier articles, was a man who had a hand in inventing and developing the Strat: he was Leo Fender's in-house musician, and played with famed swing band Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.

There are other examples from the fifties. Norman Harris's book ["Norman's Rare Guitars: 30 Years of Buying, Selling & Collecting", by Norman Harris with David Swartz] depicts an original black '56 and a "Desert Sand" one-of-a-kind with an all-rosewood neck, and many other Custom Color specimens from the fifties. And then there's an original '59 in Fiesta Red (the first Custom Color officially available to the public) with matching headstock (a rare feature before 1963), gold parts, and an "A" width or skinny neck, that was found in Orange County, California, and identified by none other than Bill Carson as Fender's '59 NAMM Show guitar.

The early sixties

In the sixties, right around the time surf music was growing in popularity (1960-1 or so), you start to see a host of gorgeous colors like Candy Apple Red, Lake Placid Blue, Sonic Blue, Daphne Blue, Dakota Red, Shoreline Gold, Burgundy Metallalic, Sherwood Green (one of my favorites), Shell Pink, Inca Silver, Sea Foam Green, Surf Green, Teal Green... the list goes on and on. Later, in the mid-sixties, you'll find additional Custom Colors such as Ocean Turquoise Metallic, Charcoal Frost and many others. Separate color charts were included with the catalogs of this period that the public could take home and drool over (and from which they could order, probably accounting for the upswing in Custom Color popularity in the early sixties).

The importance of Custom Colors to the collector? The right Custom Color on the right Strat can double and in some cases even triple the price of the exact same year instrument in a standard Sunburst finish.

Custom Color "refins"

Another interesting aspect of vintage Custom Colors is the "Fender factory refin", a refinishing performed in the same era so the color is correct although it's the second finish on the guitar. At one time, collectors sneered at these compared to the completely original Custom Color examples, but, as time passes and there are fewer and fewer guitars available and higher and higher prices being paid for them, the factory refin has become the next best thing to the original.

The way to know if you have a refin that was done at the Fender factory is to look at the disassembled guitar. You'll more than likely see a stamped abbreviation in the new finish under the pickguard that will read something like C.A.R. for Candy Apple Red, or B.Mist for Burgundy Mist.

Additionally, it was not altogether uncommon for the Fender factory to refinish, of its own accord, a guitar that had been sent back for other repairs (non-finish related) in the original finish. The finish lacquer used during the pre-CBS period was so thin that belt-buckle rash would often begin to show immediately and, due to Fender's pride of workmanship, factory-repaired guitars often received a refin to put the guitar closer to its original condition. Look in the neck pocket, as the factory would mark both the back of the heel of the neck and the body pocket with a four digit ID number so the original owner would receive the same neck and body that was sent to the factory.

Not all Candy Apple Reds were created equally

It's important to mention a few details about the different hues and shades in the same Custom Color from one year to the next, and how to identify the originality of the finish. One may notice that a color like Dakota Red, for example, will look very different from one era to another, and sometimes from one guitar to another from the same era. An early Dakota Red Strat has a "tomato soup" look (as it's sometimes referred to by collectors) while a slightly later Dakota Red may look more like Fire Engine Red.

The reasons a Custom Color may vary from one Strat to another within the same year is guesswork, but the most common theory is that the paint was kept in very large containers, would settle and get remixed inconsistently from time to time, and this resulted in hue and shade variation among instruments with the same Custom Color. Another factor to consider was the use of different undercoatings as discussed below.

It's not a simple matter to identify these variant finishes as original. Experts who deal in Custom Color Strats can often tell just by looking at the color itself. But of course, this ability is the result of having seriously studied, in person, hundreds of examples.

Don't forget your undercoat

For the less experienced, an approach to understanding these variant Custom Colors can be formed by examining the instrument's undercoating. The Fender factory, depending on the color and era, would use a white, silver, gold, or, less frequently, light sand-brown undercoat, and the use of a different undercoat color seems to cause hue variations among instruments with the same finish. I've seen, for example, some vintage Candy Apple Red Strats that looked warmer than others. Turns out that some had a gold undercoat and some had silver, and the difference in the undercoat seemed to account for the difference in the hue of the finish.

In learning to identify these undercoats you begin to see how many Strats were refinished, and how large of a percentage were not done by at the Fender factory, but instead by the nearest guitar or auto body shop, as such shops also had access to the Du Pont paints originally used by Fender.

It is very important to mention that, unlike an original Custom Color that will largely increase the value of the guitar, a non-factory refinish will cut the market price to half of that of a regular standard Sunburst finish of the same era - which means a substantially larger drop in value compared to an original Custom Color Stratocaster.

Looks like gold parts and custom order neck widths will have to wait for Part Four. At least now you have a little information about that old pink electric guitar in Uncle Joe's closet.

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