Eric Johnson's Fender Strat Model Electric Guitar
Fender® Eric Johnson Stratocaster®
Fender - Eric Johnson Stratocaster Electric Guitar - 2 Tone Sunburst "After years of continual consumer and retailer requests,Fender is pleased to announce the long-awaited Eric Johnson Signature Model Stratocaster guitar."
This has been made possible because of Eric's expressed desire to give something back to the collectors, players and, especially, the fans who have supported him throughout his career.
Designed with Eric by Custom Shop guru Michael Frank-Braun, this beauty is based on a '57, and combines the best of vintage design with modern electronics technology. The '57-style, 2-piece alder body has an ultrathin, Custom Shop-quality nitrocellulose lacquer finish that results in better resonance. Johnson opted for a one-piece, quartersawn maple neck with a 12" radius that's finished with a thin-skinned glossy lacquer and vintage tint.
Said Mike Tonn, Marketing Manager for Fender Electric Guitars, Eric Johnson has been at the forefront of innovative guitar playing for years. He's enjoyed an amazingly successful career that is still going strong, and along the way, he has amassed an incredibly devoted fan base that has literally been begging us to make a guitar with Eric's name on it, and built to his exact specifications. We're thrilled to be able to offer this new Signature Model guitar. Not just for the guitar players who have wanted this model, but to be able to honor the musical body of work that Eric has given to the world.
Additional features include staggered vintage style machine heads, thus eliminating the need for a string tree, custom pickups with countersink screws and wound to Eric's specifications, and highly contoured body and neck. The guitar also comes with a parchment '57 style pickguard, 5-Way Switch, Master Volume, Neck Tone and Bridge Tone controls, and a Vintage Tremolo with 4 tremolo springs, silver painted block and '57 style string recess with no paint between base plate and the block.
19 prototype pickups were created before Johnson found the tone he was looking for. The Custom Shop-modified single coils use a new wire material for the magnets. Johnson and Braun also included one of Eric's most famous Strat modifications by wiring the tone controls to the neck and bridge pickups, instead of the standard neck/middle tone configuration of most Strats. This guitar is tonal perfection thanks to the discerning ear of one of the best players to ever pick up an axe. And it's pleasing to the eye as well, with it's large arm contour, '57-style pickguard and shallow pickup cavities, plus thin headstock with vintage tuners. Unbelievable Custom Shop quality in a production guitar.
Unbelievable Custom Shop quality in a production axe. This one was well worth the wait! Available in 2-tone Sunburst, Black, White Blonde, and Candy Apple Red finishes.
Features:
'57-style, 2-piece alder body
Body cavities true to '57 specs
One-piece, quartersawn plain maple neck
Thinner, vintage-style headstock
12" radius American Series-style frets
Staggered vintage machine heads
Thin neck cap
Custom Shop-modified single-coil pickups
Master volume, neck tone, and bridge tone controls
Vintage tremolo with silver painted block '57-style string recess
Thin nitrocellulose lacquer finish
Includes Fender hardshell case
Fender Eric Johnson Stratocaster Electric Guitar White Blonde Maple Fretboard
Eric Johnson cliffs of dover
NPR's Weekend Edition - Eric Johnson's Guitar Gets to Austin's Roots
Eric Johnson's guitar playing reflects the musical diversity of Austin, Texas, his hometown. Austin, along with his father, helped him develop "a real love for all different styles of music," he tells Scott Simon during a visit to NPR's Studio 4A.
Those styles include country, blues, rock and jazz fusion. Johnson first began playing in public at age 13 and later was a session player for Carole King and Christopher Cross. After several albums, awards and at least two guitars bearing his name, Johnson became a respected and oft-imitated music veteran.
Johnson, who counts Jimi Hendrix, country guitarist Jerry Reed and Bob Dylan among his influences, isn't likely to mind being imitated. "I think the way you develop your own sound is you go through a process by which you imitate people... you form a collage of all these different players that you imitate [and] you form your own recipe," he says.
His latest album, Bloom, is a set of 16 songs divided by tone into three sections named for classical dance terms.
Listen to Broadcast: NPR's Weekend Edition - Eric Johnson's Guitar Gets to Austin's Roots
Updated: 2/23/07 |
