In 1993, Fender commissioned Spruce Hill Music in Minnesota to make about 400 aluminum Stratocaster bodies and 100 aluminum Telecaster bodies. 109 of the Stratocaster bodies got made into the Fender Harley-Davidson 90th Anniversary Commemorative model, recently selling for $22,000 - $30,000 - our "new economy" may change this. Many of the other Strats were anodized into blue, purple, green and red splotch finishes - yuk? :icon_scratch: The Tele bodies & guitars seem to have fallen off the face of the Earth - apparently into collectordom, somebody's sitting on 'em. I found ONE picture of a splotchy blue on on the whole internet, and a story of someone driving through sixteen states trying to find one - unsuccessfully.
One of them found it's way into the hands of an old, old friend of mine - high school daze, 33 years back? Leo owns a studio in Minneapolis and has been sitting on this for 15 years. I have been trying to weasel it out of him for five... I traded him a ridiculously low-value amount of stuff for it, a DeArmond Guild-clone guitar and a Lexicon reverb unit. I think it's mostly that he knows it's going to get hooked up and PLAYED, as he is not a "collector" collector but a fellow addict, sitting on a Holy Grail...
Yee-Haw!
This is the $25,000 strat:
I suspect my Tele will end up looking more like this Strat than anything else:
That Tele in the picture is a custom "dobro" made by Spruce Hill, as they kept the forms/jigs/patterns and are licensed to bang out custom one-offs. Gee, I hope I have enough treble.... :laughing7:
One of them found it's way into the hands of an old, old friend of mine - high school daze, 33 years back? Leo owns a studio in Minneapolis and has been sitting on this for 15 years. I have been trying to weasel it out of him for five... I traded him a ridiculously low-value amount of stuff for it, a DeArmond Guild-clone guitar and a Lexicon reverb unit. I think it's mostly that he knows it's going to get hooked up and PLAYED, as he is not a "collector" collector but a fellow addict, sitting on a Holy Grail...
Yee-Haw!
This is the $25,000 strat:
I suspect my Tele will end up looking more like this Strat than anything else:
That Tele in the picture is a custom "dobro" made by Spruce Hill, as they kept the forms/jigs/patterns and are licensed to bang out custom one-offs. Gee, I hope I have enough treble.... :laughing7: