Creating a "Road Worn Distressed" Fender Strat

[moxham123]

Creating a "Road Worn Distressed" Fender Stratocaster

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq_4e13Y ... e=youtu.be

[bassist_25]

I was never a fan of the pre-worn guitars. I always found the concept cheesy to make a brand new instrument look like a heavily played pre-CBS Fender. I dig a nicely worn instrument, but I like it when it comes from being played for years and years. Although from what I understand, some of the relic Fenders are great players.

With that said, that relic job actually looks better than a lot of the mass produced pre-reliced guitars that I've seen. It kind of looks like Felix's Strat.

[moxham123]

Felix's Strat has lots of "character" and "personality".

[kayla]

i have one of the road worn strats, it was a birthday gift actually. at first i thought it was cool, i kinda think its cheesey now that i've matured as a musician. but its a rather nice sounding strat. it was free, so i really won't complain.

[Jasaoke]

I really want the job of 'distressing' guitars. No 2 would be alike, I would come up with fun and unique ways to pre-age each and every creation. If anyone is interested, I'd be more than happy to beat the crap out of your guitar for you.

[StumbleFingers]

I've always wondered how guitars become that distressed in the first place. Like Rory Gallagher's famous strat:



It looks like 90% of the finish is completely gone from that! Holy crap! I couldn't make a guitar look like that if I wore sandpaper shirts. Is it because some finishes are flimsier than others? Do some people have more acidic sweat? Is it from wearing metal bracelets? Is it intentional damage? Sandpaper shirts?

[m2helmet]

In the case of Rory's strat, there were several factors at play.
1st, it was a '61. The finish at the time was laquer, which unlike modern day polyurethane, wears much easier. He purchased it in the early '60's while playing with The Fontana Showband. It was actually stolen from him and when the word was put out the perpetrator tossed it into a ditch where it laid in the rain for several days. It was gradually found and returned.
2nd, Rory had a rare blood type. When he performed, he sweated buckets. As a result of both of these factors, the sweat had a very acidic effect on the finish, eating away at it. Combine this with years of constant playing and pick wear and voila....Rory's famously battered strat !

[StumbleFingers]

It was actually stolen from him and when the word was put out the perpetrator tossed it into a ditch where it laid in the rain for several days.

Now that's some blues!

Fender sells brand new ones from the Custom Shop, of course. They'd better be tossing these things in a ditch. For $5,500, I would be highly disappointed if they hadn't done that.



I'm not usually a big fan of relic-ing, but that is a very cool guitar.

[m2helmet]

I talked to a guy from Fender's custom shop about this guitar. One of the differences is that the reissue has a 9 1/2" radius fretboard. Rory's originally had a 7 1/4" one. He had it refretted so many times that eventually it was sanded down to the 9 1/2" configuration.
Because of the sweat factor previously mentioned, there were times that the neck had to be removed and left to dry out as the roswewood and back of it were susceptible to absorbing the moisture. This is evident in the Rockpalast DVD's where in some shots you can plainly see the back of the neck with finish on it.
There are several great books out about Rory. I found the best to be 'Riding Shotgun' by his former bass player, Gerry McAvoy.

Don't mean to ramble on... just that Rory is one of my all time favorites.