Jeff Beck’s stage-used prototype Graffiti Yellow Fender Stratocaster sells at public sale for over $94,000
A prototype Graffiti Yellow Fender Stratocaster used extensively onstage by Jeff Beck has bought at public sale for £76,600 (~$94,500).
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The electrical guitar, which went beneath the hammer earlier this week (Might 24) in a sale facilitated by Bonhams, has an enchanting historical past, closely intertwined with Beck’s important function in Fender’s revitalization and the event of the corporate’s Strat Plus guitar.
The Strat was commissioned by Beck from Fender in 1986 for a forthcoming Japanese tour, with two key circumstances – the primary was that the neck needed to be outsized, and the second was the distinctive end, an homage to Beck’s American Graffiti 1932 Ford Hotrod Coupe reproduction.
Initially, the guitar – a ’62 Reissue Strat with the requested outsized neck – featured an American Commonplace Tremolo, a 60’s eleven-screw white scratchplate, and ’60s pickups.
Sooner or later, based on Bonhams, the guitar’s Commonplace American Bridge was eliminated and changed with a prototype two-point pivot tremolo, in tandem with the set up of a brand new, outsized neck – that includes a headstock with then-still-in-development Sperzel Star locking tuners.
The Strat’s ’60s scratchplate was additionally changed with a ’50s eight-screw scratchplate, with one other then-in-development product, a Trevor Wilkinson Curler nut, additionally being fitted to the guitar.
Beck then used the modified guitar throughout one other tour of Japan, in 1989, earlier than deciding (for the time) towards growing a signature guitar and sending it again to Fender.
Fender, nonetheless, repaired its neck, and put in a trio of Lace Sensor electrical guitar pickups (primarily turning it right into a Fender Strat Plus mannequin) and despatched it again to Beck, who then stored it round.
The ultimate product, as bought, options an alder physique and a maple neck with a Brazilian rosewood fingerboard, and got here with its authentic Selmer tweed rectangular exhausting case, and a bunch of memorabilia referring to the Japanese excursions on which Beck used the guitar.
In 1994, Beck gave the Strat to Suzy O’Hara, a flying teacher with whom he was in a relationship on the time.
“As he demonstrated to me and performed the Strat, Jeff stated that the neck on the guitar was ‘wonderful and had an unimaginable really feel’ and, if I didn’t thoughts, he would change it for one more neck in order that he might use it himself, however we by no means acquired round to doing this and so the unique neck stays,” O’Hara advised Bonhams.
For more information on the guitar, go to the Bonhams web site, and be sure you learn our full function on Jeff Beck’s affect on the event of the Strat Plus design.
