The old Fiesta Red dispute

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Re: The old Fiesta Red dispute

Postby Didier » Sun Nov 22, 2015 9:51 am

Here is what I wrote here on this subject a few years ago :

Every Shadows' fan knows that the Shadows received from JMI (Vox) a set of fiesta red guitars around march/april 1961, after JMI became UK distributor for Fender Guitar. Hank and Bruce then received their famous Strats with rosewood fingerboard, which they used until they got the Burns in 1964.

Looking more closely at an old interview of Hank Marvin in a French magazine I found something interesting about the fiesta red colour :
L'interdit venait juste d'être levé et les gens de chez Vox s'étaient assurés l'exclusivité sur l'importation du matériel Fender. Les premiers colis contenaient quelques Precision Bass, quelques Stratocaster et des Telecaster. C'est pourquoi, afin de faire une publicité pour la gamme Fender, Bruce posa avec une Telecaster et Jet avec une Precision Bass. Pendant ce temps on nous faisait spécialement peindre en rouge deux Stratocaster et une Precision Bass pour que nous ayions tous trois des instruments de même couleur. On les reçus quelques jours plus tard. C'est ainsi que je rendis ma première Strato, qui ne m'appartenait pas vraiment, à Cliff Richard.

Translation :
The (import) ban had just been removed, and people at Vox got an exclusive import contract for Fender products. The first packages contained some Precision Bass, some Stratocaster and Telecaster. This is why Bruce was shot with a Telecaster and Jet with a Precision Bass to promote the Fender range. Meanwhile two stratocaster and one Precision Bass were specially painted in fiesta red for us so we would all have a guitar of the same colour. We got them a few days later. So I gave back to Cliff my first Strat which wasn't really mine.

This confirms that Strats which were imported by JMI in UK (probably mostly sunburst) were repainted when needed in fiesta red to match the demand for this colour, and that the Shadows' guitars were part of the repainted ones !
What the story doesn't tell is if the fiesta red colour used in UK was exactly the same as the one used in the Fender factory...

BTW, the interviewer was no one else than guitarist Marcel Dadi, one of the best European finger picking specialist who died in the crash of flight TWA 800 in 1996, when coming back from Nasville where he was just introduced to the Country Music Hall of Fame.

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Re: The old Fiesta Red dispute

Postby Billyboygretsch » Wed Nov 25, 2015 5:56 pm

I wonder if Cliff ordered that colour as he was driving the same colour Ford Thunderbird 7 AYN at that time ?
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Re: The old Fiesta Red dispute

Postby Graylion » Wed Nov 25, 2015 6:46 pm

I am absolutely certain that the early Strats, including Hank's/Cliff's were a shade of pink. I have an idetic memory for colours and I first played a pink Strat in a music shop in Southampton where my friend and rhythm guitarist was manager. (In my mind's eye I can see it now from the perspective of a player looking down on it - weird eh?) This was in late Summer 1962. In 1964 we briefly took on a new rhythm guitarist who actually owned a pink one! (I couldn't afford to buy one until 1982!) He had a 'custom-built' 30 watt amp based on the AC30 but complained about the 'thin' sound he got from it. I looked in the open back and saw two Goodman's Axiom speakers! Case closed! (What was the builder's mistake anyone?) The problem is that a paint colour name in itself isn't by any means absolute. "Fiesta Red", for instance has no associated item to convey the actual colour. "Flamingo" and "Coral" pink DO have something, but it's all subjective. "One man's pink....." As that article says, there was no "Fiesta Red" pre-1960. Anyway, I can see the colour now so feel free to come and extract it from my brain! :D Colours shown electronically will obviously vary from one monitor to the next, unless they have been calibrated to a common standard. I must have a look at a few colour swatches - it's really the only way to get an accurate representation. The main thing for me is that i really like the early pink and dislike the later red - much too close to pillarbox red for me
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Re: The old Fiesta Red dispute

Postby Billyboygretsch » Thu Nov 26, 2015 6:10 pm

image.jpeg
(82.25 KiB) Downloaded 8267 times
Fiesta Red ?
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Re: The old Fiesta Red dispute

Postby ecca » Thu Nov 26, 2015 8:16 pm

I went to see them live at Cannock in 1961 (?) and from then on it was always a pink guitar. Not red.
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Re: The old Fiesta Red dispute

Postby franz » Thu Dec 10, 2015 12:56 am

My Shads first album cover shows just the top of the body of Hank's strat and it is a definite reddish pink colour, and nowhere near what we understand as Fiesta Red. Given the vagaries of photographic colours at that time, if this is not a true reproduction of the actual colour of the guitar, it would seem odd that the colours of Jet's sunburst Precision and Bruce's Telecaster look to be faithfully reproduced. Is only one out of the three guitars not the right colour?
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Re: The old Fiesta Red dispute

Postby Uncle Fiesta » Tue Dec 15, 2015 7:07 pm

Billyboygretsch wrote:I wonder if Cliff ordered that colour as he was driving the same colour Ford Thunderbird 7 AYN at that time ?


Fiesta Red only appeared on the 1956 Thunderbird, which I don't think Cliff's was.
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Re: The old Fiesta Red dispute

Postby MikeAB » Tue Dec 15, 2015 8:09 pm

In shop windows the fluorescent lights can of course drastically alter colour. Expert colourists/colour matchers use a light box where they can call up different lighting depending on the final application etc. Fluorescent light is one of the settings and would be used for formulating plastic shop window displays etc etc.
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Re: The old Fiesta Red dispute

Postby scotocaster » Tue Dec 15, 2015 10:27 pm

did anyone see a live performance of Hank using his first Stratocaster and then using the one he received from JMI with the rosewood fingerboard?, did the color look the same?. Scott
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Re: The old Fiesta Red dispute

Postby ecca » Wed Dec 16, 2015 8:25 am

Pink pink pink.
That was the colour in my head from having saw them on stage at Cannock.
Not red.
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