Thursday, December 1, 2011

Oh why hello there! They call me...

... Fender Custom.
Yeah this photo came from Craigslist
Ok, theres a lot going on in this guitar. Lets disect it down to make it more managable, shall we?

The neck and the pickups are from Fender's ill fated "Electric XII" 12 string electric guitars. It was designed from ground up in 1965 for folk musicians that wanted to play an electric 12 string. They were made from 65-69.  Apparently they weren't a hit so Fender was left with a batch of necks and bodies and pickups they couldn't use for other guitars.

So what did they do? Well employee Virgilio "Babe" Simon comes up with a plan to sell the rest: cut the bottom of the body in a funny way, add a tremolo, seal up the 6 of the headstock holes, and make it a standard(ish) 6 string. And so they did.

They called some the "Fender Custom" and others the "Fender Maverick". The rest speaks for itself.
The neck honestly looks really nice other than the awkward headstock. The pickup selector is unique too.

But how does it sound? Ive never seen split coil pickups on a guitar before (besides G&L's z coils), only on pbasses and mustang basses. (speaking of mustang basses, those pickups look awfully familiar...) Unfortunately, I cannot find any videos of people playing one. On the off chance someone owns one of these, please record a clip of playing this, those split pickups look killer!

1 comment:

  1. Rick Nielsen owns an original Maverick in Fiesta Red with a matching headstock and a mint green pickguard.

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