Fender Custom Shop Wildwood 10 Stratocaster

Specifications

Features

From the Fender website:

Fender proudly unveils the LTD Dealer Select Wildwood "10s" 1965 Stratocaster Relic guitar, offered exclusively by Wildwood Guitars of Louisville, Colo.

Built from original tooling and featuring all-original detailing, this dazzling guitar has a lightweight select alder body and 1965 C-shaped maple neck with a 10"-radius 21-fret dark rosewood fingerboard and bone nut. Of the three John Cruz Master-Designed Strat® pickups, the middle one is reverse- wound/reverse-polarity.

The guitar has been given our "Relic" treatment—built to show the natural wear and tear of years of heavy use, with nicks and scratches, worn finish, rusty hardware and aged plastic parts. Other features include a three-ply mint green pickguard, special Dealer Select LTD neckplate, Custom Shop limited edition decal and LTD Dealer Select certificate. Comes in a black Limited Edition case.

Review

The Fender Stratocaster is one of the most copied, imitated and revered guitars of all time. Leo Fender created a work of art that is truly timeless in both its simplicity and design. The 50s and early 60s Strats are considered to be the finest examples of Leo’s legendary work. But how many among us can/will own a piece of this most auspicious history? Not many. So how will we mere mortals ever get to experience the joy of playing such a coveted guitar? Thanks to the Fender Custom Shop we can get a taste of what it might be like to own something that is normally out of reach.

A little background on the Fender Custom Shop: it was started in January 1987 by Michael Stevens and John Page, after being commissioned by the savior of Fender, William Schultz. The Custom Shop handled custom orders and options for Fender products including a lot of “one off” guitars for artists, collectors and Fender-o-phial’s alike. It wasn’t until the Winter NAMM show of 1995 that the Relic Guitars made their appearance and became an instant hit. The Relics from ’95 – ’99 were produced in a sort of two step process: the components for the guitars were made at Fender in the California plant and the paint and Relic process was performed by Vince Cunetto out in Bolliver, Missouri (under the banner “Cunetto Creative Resources, Inc”). In 1999 the Custom Shop brought the Relic finish process in house and launched the “Time Machine Series” of guitars (and basses). The last of the “Cunetto Era” Relics were shipped to Fender in June of 1999.

The Wildwood 10

If you ever find yourself in Louisville, CO you owe it to yourself to drop in and visit one of the best guitar shops in North America, Wildwood Guitars  (actually it’s only about a 20 minute drive from the Denver International Airport). Wildwood is a guitar fanatic’s dream, with an enormous inventory of guitars from all your favorites and hands down the friendliest staff I’ve ever met. If you don’t see yourself making it out to the Greater Denver area in the next while, you can always visit the website http://www.wildwoodguitars.com (a site I visit everyday, no kidding).

The “Wildwood 10s” are a collaboration between the Fender Custom Shop’s Mike Eldred and Wildwood’s owner Steve Mesple who partnered together to make this guitar. The Wildwood 10 guitars feature "faded" thin nitrocellulose Relic finish, lightweight hand-selected tone woods, custom-voiced pickups (designed by Master Builder John Cruz), and unique 10" fingerboard radius (the only Fender model to feature this radius), and 6105 frets.

This is the first Fender Relic I have reviewed and to be honest I had always been somewhat skeptical of them. Why would anyone want to pay extra for a beat up guitar? The web is certainly full of detractors of the Relic craze (look at any Fender forum); a lot of people just don’t see the use for it. To some extent I agreed with them, that was until I got a chance to really take one out for a test drive. I can now say that I see the reason why people love these guitars.

The guitar really has a worked in feel to it, like someone had played and loved this guitar for a long time. The neck feels near perfect to my hands, the finish is not sticky or tacky like a new nitro finished guitar; mind you it is not as smooth as a satin finished neck. The guitar on the whole looks like a vintage style Strat with vintage Gotoh tuners and 6 screw bridge (that has been rusted a little, but I have to wonder why?), 3 ply aged mint pickguard, bone nut, 5 way pick up selector switch and 3 aged knob controls (Volume, Tone, Tone). The paint job is a faded 3-color sunburst with a few nicks, scratches and bumps that simulate a road worn guitar that has seen many an evening on stage.  This is what Fender refers to as the “relic” treatment, I have seen some heavy relic finishes but I find them to be a little over the top. The wear and tear on this paint job just looks right, it looks like it was the main axe of a serious touring musician.

I tested this guitar using a Mesa Boogie Roadster Head on a Mesa 2 X 12 sealed back Recto Cab (currently my favorite amp) starting on a clean fat channel with a healthy amount of reverb and the pick up selector in the forward most position (neck single coil only). From the first note I was in Strat single coil heaven, the John Cruz pickups ringing with a good amount of strength and clarity. The other four positions yielded all of the classic tones and variants that one would expect from a vintage voiced guitar. Of particular note is the 4th position on the 5 way (being the bridge and middle pickup) this to me this is one of the best tones the Strat has to offer and the Wildwood 10 hits it out of the park. Moving the amp to its Tweed channel for a little dirt (still with reverb) really highlighted the full and balanced sound of the guitar. With extra gain one is allowed the opportunity to explore the tones available via the volume knob. The guitar really has a wide useable range just using the volume knob. I found the tones between “3” and “10” to all be useful and worth exploring.

Being a fuzz fan, I put a late 90’s Arbiter Fuzz Face reissue in the mix to see how the pickups would react. The pedal is an interesting one in that it is not a tear your face off kind of Fuzz, but it acts almost like a boost with Fuzzy overtones. Continuing with the Mesa set to the Tweed channel and the volume of the guitar full up I found it easy to dial in some very convincing early Hendrix-style guitar tones and more than enough grit for some nice leads.

The distorted tones you can get from the guitar are full and detailed, not over powering; I am reminded of what Carl Verheyen said about Strat’s and distortion:

“To get a good sound out of a single coil pickup is work. They are not as beefy or as powerful as a humbucker. Humbuckers seem to slam the front end of an amp and give you instant distortion; with single coils you have to work a little harder.  I think that extra work makes people sound more unique. The extra time you have to spend to make a single coil speak gives you a more personal character to your distorted sound.”

Even using the Mesa on the Modern channel with the gain near full the guitar sounded amazing, not like a humbucker but like a Strat should: glassy and with a good amount of growl. The pick-ups are certainly not what I would refer to as “hot” (like say a Lace sensor) but they do produce a very even distorted tone when you kick a little drive in.

The one issue you will encounter with this guitar is the presence of 60-cycle hum and buzz. This is the bane of single coils in general, but this seemed overly pronounced to me. Beyond the single coil issue there is also a lack of internal shielding (meaning the body cavities are not coated with conductive shielding paint). This is not implying an oversight by Fender, as the guitar is built to the same spec as guitars in the early 60’s. Of course if this is an issue you can always send your guitar to Pat’s guitars and have him shield it and do some extra grounding for you (he does an amazing job).

The 6105 frets are a welcome improvement over the standard “vintage” size; I really hope this will lead many to discover the 6100’s as they are just as tall as the 6105’s, but wider. 6100’s are the best fret in my humble opinion. String bends were effortless and the strings never fretted out. The 21 frets are perfectly dressed without any rough spots at all. The fit and finish of this guitar is exactly what I would expect for the price tag. Tuning stability was extremely good through bends, solos and some hard playing; I didn’t need to re-tune the guitar while playing. Bear in mind that the guitar does not have locking tuners, but rather vintage style tuners. Impressive… most impressive.

The price. An instrument of this caliber is going to set you back a sizable amount; the guitar was $3500 including a Custom Shop case and all the regular accoutrements (case candy). Is it expensive? Yes, absolutely it is. But is it worth it? Well, that all depends entirely on what you are looking for in a guitar. I personally am a huge Strat fan; I love everything about them and like many fans of the Strat I have always lusted after a vintage model from early 60’s. But I doubt I will ever find myself with an extra $50 000 - $75 000 of disposable income to be able to buy one. Having played several fine examples of these holy grails I can say that this Wildwood 10 gets so close to the real thing that you may not mind not ever getting to own the real thing. If it is a vintage Strat you are looking for, this may be it. It should be noted that the first run of the Wildwood 10’s were 100% sold out and they are now on the second series of these guitars.

Check out this video from Fender:

The Final Word

So what is my impression of this guitar? Well, I can sum it up by saying that I was on vacation for two weeks sans guitar and all I could think about was getting home to play it. So the question will inevitably be: is this guitar worth $3500? Well that is all up to you in the end. All of the Wildwood 10’s from this series are 100% sold out. The popularity of 6105 frets is very encouraging, as I find vintage frets to be far too small.

The guitar looks like the Strat I have always wanted to own, but could never afford. I find it interesting that on a normal day I would NEVER purchase a new guitar that had any trace of being played, in that respect I am most picky. Yet the Strat just looks right when it is banged up and scratched and this guitar hits the mark for the look. And it’s a newly constructed instrument so I don’t need to worry about and issues that might come with a well-played 50-year-old guitar. The guitar is light and resonant and it sings when playing with out even being plugged in. The hours fly by and you just never grow tired of the sound. If you are a fan of the Fender Stratocaster, I recommend you check it out.