For almost four decades, the guitars that live closest to the edge of dreams at Fender are those built by the Custom Shop.
What began as a means to give players the highest-quality classic electric guitars money could buy has become a place where Fender heritage is studied and venerated but also combined with the bleeding edge of tone-making tricks and mash-up aesthetics.
And the hill of innovation keeps getting steeper as players become ever-more savvy to the options they could order for their dream guitar. Let’s find out what the state of the Custom Shop’s art is in 2025.
How has the Custom Shop evolved over the past 20 years?
Paul Waller (master builder): “I would say that when I started, we didn’t have the amount of limited-edition replica guitars that we’re making now. Back then, they were just starting to come into their own, with the Jaco [Pastorius] bass and stuff.
“But then we really started doing a lot more of that as artists were coming into the fold and seeing what the potential was. So I think it just elevated our status [and showed] how good we’ve gotten at doing relic guitars and emulating old guitars. It’s really a statement, like planting a flag on the hill saying, ‘We are really good at it.’ That evolution has really helped to boost the status of the Fender Custom Shop, in my opinion.”
Chase Paul (director of product development): “For me, the Shop has always been the pinnacle of Fender instruments. So we can build a perfect replica of either an artist model like a signature guitar, or something historic – whether it’s an early ’50s Blackguard or a mid-’50s Strat…
In some cases, we follow trends just like fashion. One of the bullet points to that is color. We’ll see specific vintage colors come in and out of fashion, Shell Pink being one
Paul Waller
“Those things have always been the touchstone for the golden era of Fender in a lot of ways because the guitars have always been built the old-fashioned way.
“So, for me, it’s kind of been this peak of what Fender instruments should be. And then over the past 10 or 15 years it’s really taken on this ‘if you dream it, we’ll build it’ kind of mentality. Where customers can come up with things, dealers can come up with things that make guys like Paul or Dennis [Galuszka, fellow master builder] be like, ‘Yeah, let’s try that.’ Those are guys who’ve been building guitars here for 20 years or more.
“I think it’s always been – and hopefully will always be – the absolute aspirational peak of what Fender instruments are. But I think [its role as a] playground for the builders to perfect guitars that they dream up, or that customers have come up with… Hopefully that never changes.”
Do customers want different things from CS Fenders than they did a decade ago?
Paul: “Yes and no. I mean, in some cases, we follow trends just like fashion. One of the bullet points to that is colour. We’ll see specific vintage colours come in and out of fashion, Shell Pink being one of the statement [custom colour finishes].
“It’s really popular for a couple of years, then we won’t build one for a while, and then it’ll get so popular that Chase will inevitably have to spec one out at a Team Built level just to keep up with the demand. And then it just falls off again. The same thing with sparkle finishes and some others – usually the greens and some of the blues.
“The ones that always get built are the blonde Teles, the black Strats, sunbursts… We make those in the same quantities no matter what is in fashion. It’s interesting to see all that stuff happen, but the thing that has evolved is the players. They have a more discerning taste and can hear a lot more of what we’re throwing [into the design of the guitars] in terms of pickups and tonewoods, specifically [through the use of] the roasted maple and alder and ash bodies.
“Those that are in the know and seeking out that tone can find it through some of those avenues. And, again, it can be a trend that might fall off or it might stay in – but we’re a made-to-order shop, so we just make what people are ordering.
“So the trends are a big part of what we do – and staying in front of them and making sure that we have good communication with our dealers. I always tell people I’m kind of living two years in the past because a lot of my orders are two years old. So it’s nice to have events where I can talk to dealers and see what’s currently the hot trend.”
Fender’s online Mod Shop tool now makes production-line guitars customisable. Have you repositioned what the Custom Shop offers because of that?
Chase: “Interesting question because [Mod Shop offers] personalisation to a much more accessible price point. But Custom Shop is the upper echelon of guitar making at Fender – so what we do in the Shop is rely on our creativity to push the boundaries of what Paul was talking about – [making guitars with] new pickups, new tonewoods, things like that.
We’ve had people literally send us lumber from a tree taken down on their own property, and asked us to build a guitar body with it
Chase Paul
“We continue to explore [all the possibilities] every time we’re in a room together and you get three, four or five of us talking about stuff: ‘What if we tried this or this?’ Within Mod Shop, however, there’s a finite number of options, right? There are things that rotate in and out, so it’s [a case of]: here’s the platform, here are the things you can spec out. It’s a really cool tool to access and see how you can build a guitar that’s personal for you.
“But within the Custom Shop, there are no limits. It’s basically: how long will it take and how much is it going to cost? Those are the two things we have to figure out. But we’ve had people literally send us lumber from a tree taken down on their own property, and asked us to build a guitar body with it. We will absolutely do that – we’ve just got to figure out how. For us, if you dream it, it will be.”
Over the years, the Custom Shop has forensically examined hundreds of vintage Fenders in order to make its own reissues more accurate. But does that process uncover any surprises about the way Fender made guitars back in the day?
Paul: “You know, Leo was a frugal person and so he didn’t throw anything away. There’s a lot of misconceptions around this – today, when a new car comes out, that new model is the new model [with fixed, uniform features for that year]. But in the past, when they had parts left over, they used them up.
“So ’58 decals would get used on ’59 guitars. 1959 was an example of what we call transition years, where there’s a little bit of both. And actually ’59 is an interesting year because a lot changed in that year with overlaps of specs.
“So you’ll see different variations of scratchplate – from single-ply to three-ply, different screw-hole patterns. Rosewood was introduced in 1959, too, but some of them were still made with maple necks. It’s just [the product of] what they had left over when they were putting guitars together, to move them out.”
“Those are the interesting anomalies that we see because as they begin to move through the production years [the specs associated with a given iteration of a model] stayed pretty tight for a couple years at least after that.
Sometimes, it’s fun to mess around with some of those transition years. As a builder, I might say to myself, ‘I’m going to call this a ’59, but it’s going to have a maple neck and a single-ply pickguard
Paul Waller
“Sometimes, it’s fun to mess around with some of those transition years. As a builder, I might say to myself, ‘I’m going to call this a ’59, but it’s going to have a maple neck and a single-ply pickguard or a different decal,’ or something like that. So there’s a little bit of room to work in.
“But for the most part, a lot of what we do is vintage – so we’re kind of in a box. But, to go back to my other point about doing a lot of replica guitars, modifications were frequently made [to famous guitars used by famous artists], so now modifications are becoming the norm. For instance, a humbucker in a Strat in the bridge position is now widely accepted and almost demanded in a modern Strat.
“Same thing with a different neck pickup in a Telecaster. Some of those vintage drifts have become standard practice in the factory, and even some of the models that are being spec’d out currently in the Custom Shop. So [it’s about] following the trends in customer demands, while staying true to the vintage but providing a modern instrument for players that are looking for something a little bit more refreshed.”
Chase: “What’s fun, too, is there are two ways that we get to see these [unusual or one-off] guitars. One is through these artist replicas, where we’ll have artists bring in their instruments and we’ll do what we refer to as an ‘autopsy’, where it’s a full inspection of the instrument. You get to see pencilled neck-dates on instruments, where you’re like, ‘Wow. I thought for a long time this was a ’59, it’s actually a 1960,’ – and so there are all these things that you get to see hands on, through artist models.
“And then, being in Southern California, we’re so close to where a lot of these guitars basically stayed once they were originally sold in the ’50s and ’60s. There are all these great independent guitar stores nearby, and something that we saw recently was a 1968 custom Tele, right? Double-bound, three-colour sunburst…
“Traditionally, in the mid-to-late ’60s, those would have had rosewood fingerboards. Or if they had maple fingerboards, they’d have the big 7mm dot inlays. This one was a maple-cap neck, so it was like a standard ’68 Tele, but it had quarter-inch dots instead of 7mm dots. And it was at a store that we trust, where we knew that this was original and that they’ve done the full inspection on it.”
“A friend of mine and I were literally in there with calipers, measuring the dots, like, ‘There’s no way those are the quarter-inch dots!’ And we’re like, ‘Holy shit. I’ve never seen this guitar before.’ So even on a daily basis, we’re exposed to things that can inform our ability to be the stewards of the Fender past. We can release something and confidently say, ‘This existed like this.’
“To Paul’s point, there were no real, clear lines in the sand where they said, ‘We stopped using this material or this spec on this date, and everything after that was a new material or a new spec,’ or whatever it is. These transitions lasted a long time. I’m sure that that guitar existed because they just found a stash of old black dots before they transitioned to the larger dots and decided to use them up.”
Custom Shop hardware such as the RSD Stratocaster vibrato and RSD Tele bridge – to name but two designs – add cool aesthetic and functional twists to familiar designs. Who comes up with those bits of hardware?
Paul: “A lot of that stuff that you’re referring to is designed and built by Scott Buell. He’s kind of a mad genius in the Shop and he’s also like the godfather of the Shop . He’s been here since the beginning days of the Custom Shop. And that’s exactly what it is – trying to make it look vintage but have a more modern spec and a more beautiful feel to it as well.
“That’s the kind of stuff that we love to do when we have free time and we’re not too terribly busy. I mean, the demand for J-bridges right now… I almost feel like it sells more guitars because of the bridge alone. That’s how good it is. And then, if customers are leaning towards a modern spec, I’ll say, ‘Why not try the RSD bridge?’”
Chase: “An important thing for us is trying to elegantly push things forward, and Scott has been such a huge part of being able to look at a vintage design and approach it using the design language of, ‘How would this have been done if this was originally implemented in late ’50s or early ’60s? What’s the problem we’re trying to solve, and how do we fix it in a way where it feels authentic to the design of the instrument?’
“Because one of the biggest things for us is, it’s not just one spec that makes a guitar – it’s, how does the entire guitar come together? And what is the full picture of what that instrument is supposed to be? So using new hardware is a way of informing that whole broader point of what that instrument is supposed to become – and things like the RSD Strat tremolo are the perfect example of this.
“If you see it on a guitar hanging on a wall in a shop, it looks like a vintage Strat bridge, but it has slightly more narrow string spacing, so it’s a little bit more comfortable for people who are doing fast picking or have more intricate picking patterns – things that modern music is calling for.
“But it still has the steel plate, it still has the bent steel saddles, it still has a cold-rolled steel block. The arm is a pop-in arm and you can adjust the tension on it so it’ll sit right where you want it to, instead of having to hope that when you screw it in it’s gonna hang where you need it to hang when you’re not playing it.
“It’s about making really thoughtful improvements on the original design while retaining the original character. That’s the lens we try to use as we’re looking at new product – whether it’s pickups, hardware… We want to try to be as respectful as we can to the things in the past and still honour the legacy of what it is that we’re doing, but move it forward incrementally so it’s a better playing experience for the artist.”
The Custom Shop has developed some pretty amazing pickups, many of which can be bought as standalone parts. What’s in the pipeline on that front?
Pickups have always been a big thing for me because I think the heart and soul of a Fender is the pickup itself
Paul Waller
Paul: “Pickups have always been a big thing for me because I think the heart and soul of a Fender is the pickup itself. I think everyone’s aware that we’re the biggest electric guitar manufacturer on the planet. And I say, ‘Well, that also makes us the biggest pickup manufacturer on the planet, and we make a pretty good one.’
“We’ve been doing it a long time, and there’s generations of people that have been working in the factory since the ’50s and ’60s that are still doing it. To me, that’s super-important; that’s the quality ingredient that goes into it. I draw a lot of inspiration from the hot-rod world, where you want to make it look like it’s an old part, or make it look like it existed back in the day but modernise it. And I employ that kind of same idea to the pickup.”
“Currently, I’m working on a humbucker that’s a more Fender-ish sounding humbucker that would work well in both the neck position in a Telecaster and the bridge position in a Strat, and doesn’t have that high volume when switched between the two, and then in the middle position, it makes it a lot sweeter and more balanced as well. So that’s what I’m really focusing on right now, in terms of pickups.
“It’s a Josefina [Campos] hand-wound humbucker that I’ve been putting in a lot of builds for my customers. I would hope that we could develop some other platforms to get it out there in wider use – just because of the high price point of a Master Built guitar – so the average guitar player can pick one up and try it for themselves. That’s maybe in the works in the future, wink, wink…”
In recent times we’ve seen the Custom Shop work with an increasing range of non-canonical tonewoods such as okoume, redwood and pine. What’s the scope for further evolution in that area, do you think?
We get stuck in this vintage thing of ‘it has to be lacquer’. The reality is we can actually spray urethane to half the thickness of lacquer and achieve a beautiful finish that’ll last longer
Paul Waller
Paul: “Personally, I don’t get too far away from the vintage stuff. My thing is, that’s the music that we’re all emulating – the day that we start emulating something that is not [performed on a guitar with] an ash body or an alder body, and that’s when the trend will heavily shift, but that’s the music we’re emulating.
“I’m now seeing this new generation kind of ripping off ’60s and ’70s music and ’90s music. And so I’m happy to hear that because that means there’s going to be another future generation of rock ’n’ roll guitar players coming out because that’s what’s cool.
“As long as that stays true, then I will always have a gig at least as long as I’m alive! For me, being a traditionalist, those few tonewoods that we mostly use are still tried and true.”
“I will say that redwood makes for an excellent-sounding guitar and so does pine, but pine can be a bit unstable and cause cupping and some issues with that, and then there’s consistency in weight and grain and all that. I think that’s why we use the woods that we use, and that’s why Leo used the woods.
“From his standpoint, he was choosing materials that were inexpensive, readily available and painted well. Ash was one of those materials that was plentiful, but it didn’t paint very well, so I believe that that was a big part of the push to move to alder – it just painted way easier.
“There was no need for grain-fill and the shrinkage wasn’t as bad, so the guitars looked better longer. I also believe that if Leo knew about urethane, or had access to urethane in the ’50s and ’60s, he probably would have used it because it would have made a nicer finish.
“But we get stuck in this vintage thing of ‘it has to be lacquer’. The reality is we can actually spray urethane to half the thickness of lacquer and achieve a beautiful finish that’ll last longer. And it’s more durable – it’s just a better material for what it is we’re doing. But we can’t get away from lacquer because of the vintage thing that we’re doing. So we need both.
“When it comes to [progressive] tonewoods, I do like roasted [wood] as it gets it more into a vintage sound, and I like redwood. But I’m not a big fan of quilt-top guitars, personally. I think it adds too much brightness. But it’s amazing how much the pickup does – arguably most of the work – but it is flavoured by the wood that surrounds it, for sure.”
The reality is that the recipe of Fender style – single-coil pickups with a bolt-on neck… there’s a finite number of things you can ‘drift’ before it starts to not sound like that any more
Chase Paul
Chase: “We’re trying to emulate the sound of these instruments that have been revered for decades, right? So you can’t step too far outside of [that] when you start using different materials. I think we end up experimenting here and there, with roasted woods or figured tops on some things – or combinations of woods – to try to emulate the sound that you would get from [traditional Fenders] but have it look a little different.
“At the end of the day, that’s the key: how does it sound? The reality is that the recipe of Fender style – single-coil pickups with a bolt-on neck that’s mostly maple or all maple… there’s a finite number of things you can ‘drift’ before it starts to not sound like that any more. And that’s okay, but it has to be an intentional choice to make it sound different.”
The archetypal Fender tobacco sunburst has to be the most iconic finish of all time. What’s your favourite version of it, Paul?
Paul: “Oh, boy, I kind of like the ‘day-glo’ ’60s-style ’bursts where the yellow is really bright [in the centre]. I think it’s because, when I was a kid, print ads in the ’80s and the ’90s weren’t as good as they are now and there were no digital platforms.
I’m not building what I want. I’m building what somebody else wants, so I have to be very careful about not steering somebody
Paul Waller
“But that’s how you would see guitars if you didn’t actually go to the store, and the print ads would always make those sunbursts look really vibrant. I know that most people don’t like the ‘day-glo’ style of sunburst, but to me that’s a ’60s guitar – with the bright yellow and the real contrast with the red and everything.
“Of course, I’m not building what I want. I’m building what somebody else wants, so I have to be very careful about not steering somebody towards my [preferred] direction. I’ve got to make sure I’m building their guitar because I pride myself on building somebody their No 1 guitar: I don’t want to give them my guitar; I want to give them their guitar. But if I get an order for one of those, man, I get excited because I love that ‘day-glo’ ’burst.”
Tell us something we don’t know about the Custom Shop.
Paul: “Bunch of clowns [laughs]. We have a lot of fun in the Shop, but we also work really, really hard and put in a lot of hours. It’s very stressful. Unlike the production line, we don’t have the option of just pulling another body or neck to facilitate a quota. We only have one chance to make that guitar because almost every guitar is completely different, unless we’re doing batching.
“With all that, plus the fact [we’re essentially] a group of artists, we have our moments of just being silly and I think it’s a necessary part of the creative environment that we all work in.”
Chase: “You took the words right out of my mouth. It truly has the dynamic of a family atmosphere, where you might have the crazy uncle, you might have the siblings who have a rivalry… But everybody knows how to have fun with each other at the right time and place. It’s an inspiring atmosphere.”
On the one hand you’re trying to accurately and consistently recreate classic Strats, Teles and other Fenders, day in day out, to exacting standards and with a big reputation and a lot of heritage to uphold. But you also have to be imaginative and take risks. How do you square that circle?
It is probably the hardest part. Balancing between getting the sometimes monotonous work done and being creative
Paul Waller
Paul: “Interesting you say that because it is probably the hardest part. Balancing between getting the sometimes monotonous work done and being creative… it’s almost like you have to bank the creative [ideas when they occur] because you can’t go looking for it; it just comes out of the sand.
“Then, once you have a moment where you can say, ‘Okay, I’ve finished my ‘have to dos’, now I can do some of my ‘wanna dos’, you can take another look at what you banked and say, ‘What do I have time for?’
“Sometimes [those stored-up creative ideas] stay there for a while before they get made into something, but sometimes it’ll be a brand-new thing and I just execute it straight away. It is difficult, but that’s the part that comes with experience.
“What we try to impress upon the next generation of master builders that are in the Shop currently is [that you need to be] able to spin all those plates simultaneously while riding a unicycle over a shark pit, juggling chainsaws on fire! Just don’t forget to be creative…”
- This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.
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