“Something you’ll hear a lot of is, ‘Oh, you didn’t earn that relicing.’ But people who like it aren't thinking of it like that”: The real reason why relicing is so popular, according to a Fender Custom Shop Masterbuilder

The relic’d guitar trend has swept through the market in recent years. Be it Gibson’s Murphy Lab going to extreme lengths to make new guitars look like they’ve seen decades on the frontline, or firms like Charvel offering pre-roughed-up axes as a stylistic choice, relic’d guitars are selling like hot cakes.

As Fender Masterbuilders, Andy Hicks and Austin MacNutt have seen this trend gain traction firsthand and believe they understand the reasons for its growth, and are also keen to dismiss one of the biggest counterarguments.

“There are people who want an instrument that looks like it’s straight out of the early ‘50s, and then there are other people who see [relicing] as another aesthetic part of the guitar,” Hicks nods, in conversation with Guitarist.

There are guitars like Rory Gallagher’s $1.16m Strat that aged naturally, through years of playing and the Irishman’s particularly acidic sweat, and then there are distinctly modern guitars like the Solar relic’d series that come pre-worn – like buying jeans with holes in them already. For the Fender team, it’s all kosher.

“In just the same way as people have their favorite colors, they also tend to have their favorite relicing level,” Hicks adds. “And it’s not about, ‘Does it look like it actually happened to the instrument?’ Something that you’ll hear a lot of is that relicing is like ‘stolen valor’ – like, ‘Oh, you didn’t earn that relicing.’ But I think people who like it are not thinking of it like that. They’re not thinking, ‘I want this instrument to look like I’ve played it for 60 years.’ They just think it’s cool.”

Indeed, Hicks says he isn’t here to “gatekeep” – his job is to build a customer’s guitar just the way they want it. It’s the same whether he’s building for Joe Bloggs down the street, or a guitar superstar like Iron Maiden’s Dave Murray, having crafted one of his most recent Custom Shop builds.

“I always tell people there’s nothing stopping you from ordering a NOS [non-relic] guitar,” MacNutt returns. “I’m more than happy to not beat it up [laughs] – so you can have both.”

Speaking to Guitarist previously, fellow Fender Custom Shop Senior Masterbuilder Paul Waller revealed what he believes gives a guitar its spirit. Guitar World previously sat down with Levi Perry in 2023, who rose through the ranks to gain Masterbuilder status after a decade with Fender.

To read the pair’s interview in full, head to Magazines Direct to order a copy of the new issue of Guitarist.