Oh, there's still a question here? And thanks Rahul and Nuno! I have been gone 4 or 5 months, separated from my family (not good) and living in motels and with parents. My wife kicked me out a long time ago due to health issues, I'd say that they were both mine and hers. Boy, she can be tough since I was no longer an economic asset? So much for our 35 years?
Hey, I'm still a father, though! You don't take that away legally or otherwise. It has been challenging, emails and writing.
No worries, let's just talk about the guitars. And I thought that my picture shows were a little excessive before, so I tried at least to cut down the size of the pictures themselves. I haven't taken any new ones, but we'll go big on these for now. I might jump in to the Christmas or Axe-mas thread, and the Les Paul thread too, but am here to say Happy New Year!
First, yeah my daughter is a Tele girl and her Tele is a stock model. I have it, as well as half of her other guitars now due to our separation, but will give them back later. She got both the Blue Flower and the Pink Paisley, which you mention as the other similar one, at the same time in 2002, when they were 5 years old, like herself. So, she has just turned 13 now. She has been been a guitar tech since age 5, and she specialized in working on bridges, especially the Floyd Rose. Musically, a 4-stringer, violin and bass, with a few guitar chords, and always able to play "lead" when you start on violin without frets?
Right, so she used the Kleenex box to show me that she wanted that type of design, not a square guitar like Bo Diddley's, ha ha, and it would need to be a Fender, since weve been primarily a Fender family. I have been collecting for 40 years, but have sold 150 - not much loss there, except for some beauties, there's plenty left, more than I can carry. Anyhow, move on.
For my daughter, who goes by the name of Billie Tw@ng, (and that would embarrass her at her current age), though she stood to come into many guitars by osmosis, like my other kids, I bought her a new White Les Paul Custom at age 4 or 5 (for the future) to recognize her efforts and commend her for her abilities with being a little Floyd Rose expert - we already had the Vai LNG Jem 777, one of my own Ibanezes with an FR, and we hated them. Billie and her brother did the FR work and string changes with setups for other school kids, and young shredders. But we keep our lives and collection private.
Must get to the story or these Teles. She wanted the Blue Flower Telecaster instead of the Les Paul, but I thought she should have both matching Teles, especially the Pink Paisley, and a Stratocaster to build. So, 3 Fenders for one Gibson.
Problem is or was, it was 2002 and there were none! They were originally made in 1968 when James Burton played the Pink Paisley rather conspicuously in Elvis' band, beginning his comeback. They have been made by Fender as re-issues before, from Japan, as MIJ, then Mexico which never went over too well, and then re-introduced as Crafted in Japan or CIJ in 1997.
We located a set of the very first-issued CIJ's from a prominent Fender dealer, manager and collector in the 'States, and he parted with them, together with hardshell cases which were extra, with dealer stickers on them, for my child. So, to eventually answer your question, these are from the first run of CIJ's ever, from within the first thousand (I don't know how many were made), are like Custom Shop, since prior to that, CIJ didn't exist. You maybe saw in 2008, a very short re-run.
Her personal or one-of-kind Strat above is a unique home made instrument which we built, has a CIJ '62 neck and a rare MIA '62 Custom Shop white pearl pickguard, Custom Shop Pickups signed and dated by Fender "girl" Abigail Ybarra, except for a vintage DiMarzio centre stack, CTS, Switchcraft, Deaf Eddie Fat-O-Caster and DiMarzio Push/Pull parts, w/17 tones.
My daughter (youngest) has her own brand and tries to be professional, matches herself and decor with her guitars where possible. When she participated in a major forum before as an underage mentored by me, using correct spelling, grammar and technical terms which she does, she was mocked and people twisted her name and did copycat posts with bad language and immature, explicit content. Oh well, she's outta there, but has designed a new Tele bridge which maybe some of her detractors can buy - it may be machined by VA Tech Engineer Bill Callaham when he returns to his shop in the new year, so in a few days!!! We have also designed a new Tele, working from Leo Fender's original 1948 Snakehead prototype and added several modern and useful, player-friendly features. It's a long shot, but we hope to build that through my son's plan, with Premier Builder's Guild in Pennsylvania, where we may also present a lighter "Les Paul" too in PRS's backyard.
Thanks again for your question and compliments. The kid deserves a break, has worked hard for it, especially trying to introduce herself or make her own niche in a tough, unforgiving other forum. She still has the Longhorn bass with her brother, they share the '74 Mustang too, and she retains her 2002 20th Anniversary Squier Strat with a humbucker and special mojo - onboard Fuzz! I have her Lace Huntington HH Strat Prototype, where we took the Lace pickups out for True Tone Technologies' Tonebursts, which are also dually's like the few that Lace makes, and they split here for 7 sounds. Lace made a Surf Series of guitars after this. We have a peculiar emerald & purple Lace dually with a Joe Barden in one of our Tele prototypes, one of 2-made burgundy Lace pups in another. Her fave axe is her 1980 USA bullet with blue and red Lace.
Like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
