Everything You Love About a '59 Strat
Rocking a heavily relic'd nitrocellulose lacquer finish, the Fender Custom Shop 1959 Time Machine Heavy Relic Stratocaster looks, sounds, and plays like an original 1959 Strat that's been maintained in tip-top playing condition. The worn nitro finish feels comfortably broken in from day one, with a few spots of more intense wear providing the appearance of decades of regular use. Handcrafted by Fender's elite Custom Shop luthiers, this '59 Time Machine is spec'd with a trio of Fat '50s Strat single-coil pickups and Vintage Modified #2 wiring — your guarantee of killer tone.
Related Videos: 1959 Time Machine Heavy Relic Stratocaster - Aged Black with Maple Fingerboard
Carefully chosen tonewoods for tone and stability
Before you ever plug the guitar in, the Fender Custom Shop Ltd. 1959 Strat Heavy Relic electric guitar sings with a resonance and clarity that is hard to find in lesser instruments. Its carefully selected 2-piece alder body is joined to a rift-sawn maple neck. Cut radially from quarter-sawn logs cut at a diagonal to the initial quartering cuts, rift-sawn necks are ultra-stable, with thinner grain that is less susceptible to warping and twisting the flat-sawn neck blanks. The result is a neck that is more impervious to changes in temperature and humidity. Perfect for gigging in Phoenix after a two-week residency in Miami!
Hand-wound Fat '50s pickups serve up legendary Strat tone
Once you stop staring at the Custom Shop 1959 Time Machine Heavy Relic Stratocaster, plug in, and start playing, you realize that this is not simply a great-looking guitar — it's a serious tone machine. Wielding three hand-wound Custom Shop Fat '50s Strat single-coil pickups, this axe deploys the authentic vintage Strat spank 'n' sparkle we all crave. Guitarists at Sweetwater love these pickups. You will, too.
The Heavy Relic treatment delivers real-deal visuals
The Fender Custom Shop's Heavy Relic treatment starts with a period-correct nitrocellulose lacquer finish. Nitro finishes — standard back in the day — are significantly thinner than today's polyurethane finishes, allowing the guitar to breathe. Relic'd guitars are then put through the aging process to give you an axe that looks and feels like it's seen decades of frontline action. The process creates instruments that are spitting images of the originals. Without sneaking a look at the neck heel stamps, you'd be hard-pressed to distinguish the Fender Custom Shop 1959 Time Machine Heavy Relic Strat from the real deal.
Fender Custom Shop 1959 Time Machine Heavy Relic Stratocaster Features:
- 2-Piece alder body, nitrocellulose lacquer Heavy Relic finish
- Tinted rift-sawn maple neck, '63 C profile, Heavy Relic nitro finish
- 9.5"-radius fingerboard, 25.5" scale length, 21 narrow-tall frets
- 3 hand-wound Fat '50s Strat single-coil pickups
- Middle pickup reverse-would, reverse-polarity
- Vintage Modified #2 wiring
- 5-way pickup selector
- Master Volume control with Tone-Saver Bleed
- Bridge Pickup Tone Control
- Middle and Neck Pickup Tone control
- American Vintage Synchronized Tremolo vibrato bridge/tailpiece
- 1.65" bone nut; vintage style tuning machines; wing-style string tree
- Factory string gauges: 9–42
- Includes hardshell case, strap, certificate of authenticity
