Not just any aluminum body, it's a leftover NOS from the Fender custom shop run in '94..
It'll be sister (cousin?) to Gleamo, my Telecaster-shaped aluminum guitar!
I don't know how much you know... they were fabricated by a Minnesota shop called Spruce Hill Guitars. There were 400 aluminum Strat bodies and 100 Telecaster bodies that got SENT to Fender. My Telecaster body has some faint polishing streaks, like a gob of polishing compound was stuck on it, leaving faint irregularities. You really have to look for them at an angle, but still - not perfect. No one knows (or is speaking about)* how many leftover bodies there actually were, but the owners of Spruce Hill apparently called Fender and said we have these "seconds type bodies" and who ever talked to them said, if effect, "So?"
So Spruce Hill up and sold some/most/all of them - cheap - to Pete Wagner, who owned "Pete's Guitars" in St. Paul (now deceased, both). He took a pile of them down to the Dallas Guitar Show and sold them there, but not before my friend Leo Whitebird snagged one of the Telecaster bodies, probably in exchange for some studio time (for Pete). And a week after they were gone, Fender called them up and said "Don't sell them!" Oooops....
I played in a "band" with Leo back in high school, mid -70's. And many other dangerous stunts... Leo built and runs a respected Minneapolis studio and has done concert sound, stage design all over that area, produced a jillion albums etc. Years back, he mentioned to ME in passing that he had this aluminum body in his closet for 10 years, I got the tinglies - but it still took me 5 more years to get it out of him!
*(all these are because there has been some really shady stuff going on, there are two different people who both claim to be making guitars out of what's left of the production run - only there weren't supposed to be any left. Some people have sent large deposits and waited two years to get a guitar, some people have sent large deposits and still not gotten a guitar...)
I am curious - do you see any buffing streaks when you hold it to a light? I don't know if you've done all the other internet sleuthing, but of the ones that Fender got, they made 109 Harley-Davidson 50th Anniversary models - which were selling at between $22,000 and $30,000 before our little Wall Street welfare program. They made some into Ford Mustang commemoratives which, if I remember right, were given to hotshot Ford dealers as a prize! But most of the bodies Fender got were either Custom-Shopped into godawful "Hawaiian"-themed guitars or, even worse, anodized with blotchy green or blue finishes:
I mean... WTF?!? :tard: :sad1: Consider yourself lucky to get a naked one...
This cowboy one is one of the ones claimed to be real. I can't remember their names right now, but it'll come to me. And nowadays there are at least four people outside of the whole Spruce Hill shenanigans who are making Aluminum teles, Normandy guitars, Alumisonic etc. Let me know how your build proceeds; one thing is sure and that is - it WILL be bright enough! :laughing3: :laughing3: :laughing3: No lack of treble response...
Adendedumdedum: "Kellett Guitars" is one of the two who seem to have a bottomless supply of extras, if in fact they have anything at all. This website hasn't been updated in years, I think.
http://kellettguitars.com/default.asp
But now there are people with non-Fender "Spruce Hill" guitars on YouTube.