12.14.10

Gold-leaf guitar: Fender Gilded Age Musical Instruments

Posted in Made in China, Rock 'n' Roll at 11:37 am by George Smith

Having riffed on the fact that iconic rock music instrument makers in the US have turned themselves into artisan businesses for the plutonomy, news of Fender’s gold leaf guitar for Prince fits right in.

From today’s paper edition of the LA Times (no link):

“Prince told his friends at Fender that he’d had a dream in which he played a gold Stratocaster … he wanted something special and asked if such a guitar could be made. Fender execs turned to their Custom Shop in Corona, where master guitar builders specialize in delivering unique instruments, for superstar musicians, as well as bankers, lawyers, employees of Goldman Sachs and Wall Street men who helicopter in from the Hamptons amateurs with the desire and the money for something out of the ordinary.

In this case, Fender execs gave the assignment to Yurly Shishlov, a Russian born guitar maker. Coincidentally, only about a week earlier during a tour of the Custom Shop, Fender execs stopped at Shishkov’s work station and asked about the gold-leafing process he was working on for another customer’s order.

For the plutocrats, there’s gold-leafing. For everyone else, including you, there’s China.

The rest of the article is filled with twaddle about how allegedly difficult it is to exquisitely finish a Stratocaster in gilt.

The Times reports Prince’s gold-leafed Strat will be played on his East Coast tour, then auctioned off for charity.

That’s nice.

2 Comments

  1. Chuck said,

    December 14, 2010 at 2:33 pm

    The only way that it’d be difficult to gild a Stratocaster is if the gilding was done underwater. You paint on sizing, apply the leaf and finish with a sable brush. You can pretty much gild anything, save for silly putty and a filet mignon.

    The question in my mind is “does a gilded Stratocaster play any better than a non-gilded one?” Probably not. Just a waste of labor and materials.

  2. George Smith said,

    December 15, 2010 at 11:13 am

    Yeah, I thought the article made way too much of the actual doing of it.