Some Jet Questions

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Re: Some Jet Questions

Postby Uncle Fiesta » Sat Sep 15, 2018 1:18 pm

With regard to point 1) above, bodies were often sprayed twice after mistakes were made. Leo was a notorious skinflint and would never have allowed anyone to strip and refinish a body, particularly if it were sunburst. The offending blemish would have been buffed out and the body oversprayed with whatever was in the spray gun at the time.

As to point 2), there is plenty of evidence that the importers had bodies oversprayed with red if they arrived in the 'wrong' colour. They would simply have been passed to a car sprayer with the instruction "an orangey-red, please" and he'd get on with it. Again, he'd more likely than not use whatever was to hand rather than order more paint.


For 'everything you ever wanted to know about Fender colours, but felt such a twit for asking', this is the best place you can go to:

http://www.guitarhq.com/fenderc.html
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Re: Some Jet Questions

Postby MMStingray54 » Thu Sep 20, 2018 11:00 pm

Yes that's an excellent site - it's changed a bit since I last looked at it - and there's more in the Fender custom colour section. As you say, re-use of bodies with flawed paint as well as 'standard finish' bodies to custom colours on receipt of orders would seem commonplace - and an obvious choice for cost reasons.

A recent article with Guy Pratt referred to his burgundy mist Precision (1964) as one of only three done that year - you can see how using already finished bodies for such small volumes could happen.
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Re: Some Jet Questions

Postby Iain Purdon » Fri Sep 21, 2018 4:25 pm

Wonderful! So can we definitively say there is no such thing as that colour? :D
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Re: Some Jet Questions

Postby MMStingray54 » Fri Sep 21, 2018 7:05 pm

Iain Purdon wrote:Wonderful! So can we definitively say there is no such thing as that colour? :D


I doubt you can say anything definitive about these things!! However it seems fiesta red started out as Fullerton red before renaming. I've never seen or heard it referred to as flamingo pink anywhere but in the UK - usually by people active in music in the early 60s. Could that be because the colour didn't have a proper name when HBM's Strat first appeared (and frankly did people care - same with car colours of the era!) so perhaps people made up what they thought it looked like? It would be great to hear some definitive info though - especially about the Jennings/Selmer refins of new instruments.....

and more to the point - did they do basses. I'm guessing the holy grail for bassists of the time was the sunburst version pictured on the first Shadows album.
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Re: Some Jet Questions

Postby JimN » Fri Sep 21, 2018 8:57 pm

The picture which adorned the front of the first Shadows LP (1961) was taken no later than about March that year (April is just possible).

By the time the album was released in September, The Shadows were well known for using the all-red Fender line-up seen in the film made that summer "The Young Ones".

For that reason, the majority of groups trying to copy the Shadows as a stage act were aiming at the all-red line-up, and lots of guitar makers with good market intelligence in Europe were catering for that look. They included Hofner, Watkins, Klira, Vox, Hagstrom (as Futurama) and lots of others. I cannot remember seeing a group gravitating to the sunburst Jazzmaster, sunburst Precision and red Strat line-up until quite recently, when they were trying to recapture the earliest days with as much authenticity as possible. And that was in France, not the UK!

The Shadows kept up the idea of the uniform electric guitar look (with a couple of odd occasions excepted) until 1969 (when John Rostill used a white Jazz Bass instead of the Burns).
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Re: Some Jet Questions

Postby cockroach » Sat Sep 22, 2018 5:10 am

The Ventures used all sunburst Fenders before they went to the Mosrites, which were also usually all the same colour- often white.

They were of course never as popular as the Shadows in most places outside the USA...except in Japan of course!

As I remember, in the era of guitar instrumental music popularity, every group wanted the three red guitar image that the Shadows had..a few groups had all white Fenders(the Fentones spring to mind)...but I don't remember any well known groups with all sunburst lineups.

The sunburst finish was effectively the standard Fender colour in those days, although Telecasters were an exception.

Let's face it- as the Stones sang- you can't always get what you want!...members of most groups were usually glad to have ANY Fender back then...having a full matching colour lineup was often an impossible dream, unless a group had wealthy management...the downside being that if a member left the group, or if the group broke up, the management kept the gear!

Many groups all bought matching Fender type copies...Hofners etc as JimN mentioned...but as observed by Micky King of the Rebel Rousers in his early column for Beat Intrumental magazine in 1963, whilst a group may have wanted matching instruments, it often stopped each individual player from having the model he really wanted...until the Beatles, Stones and other groups arrived, and many players didn't bother with matching gear thereafter..it wasn't the 'in thing' any more..
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Re: Some Jet Questions

Postby Uncle Fiesta » Sat Sep 22, 2018 3:18 pm

Thanks a bunch for mentioning the Burgundy Mist Precision bass, Don … I really want onw now.
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Re: Some Jet Questions

Postby MMStingray54 » Sat Sep 22, 2018 10:19 pm

Uncle Fiesta wrote:Thanks a bunch for mentioning the Burgundy Mist Precision bass, Don … I really want onw now.


Sorry about that!! Guy Pratt's other more famous Fender is a burgundy mist Jazz, also 64 I think - but has EMG pick ups. Great colour IMHO.

Sounds like they're super rare, especially Precisions. You could always spec and order one from Fender Custom Shop.

Regarding the matching guitars, I'm most interested in whether people used Precisions at that time - I'm guessing they were rare in the UK and those who did have them had sunburst ones (except Jet Harris/Licoroce Locking). Certainly all those in use in the later 60s appeared to be, though the guy in the Kinks appeared to have a light coloured one (white or sonic blue?)
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Re: Some Jet Questions

Postby cockroach » Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:29 am

MMStingray54 wrote:
Uncle Fiesta wrote:Thanks a bunch for mentioning the Burgundy Mist Precision bass, Don … I really want onw now.


Sorry about that!! Guy Pratt's other more famous Fender is a burgundy mist Jazz, also 64 I think - but has EMG pick ups. Great colour IMHO.

Sounds like they're super rare, especially Precisions. You could always spec and order one from Fender Custom Shop.

Regarding the matching guitars, I'm most interested in whether people used Precisions at that time - I'm guessing they were rare in the UK and those who did have them had sunburst ones (except Jet Harris/Licoroce Locking). Certainly all those in use in the later 60s appeared to be, though the guy in the Kinks appeared to have a light coloured one (white or sonic blue?)


Not really- there were quite a number used in the UK in the early '60's, same as Strats for guitar ...

Same here in Australia...in the early '60's, Strats and P basses were common..because of the Shadows..they were considered THE brand for professional use, along with Fender amps back then..there were never as many Gibsons or Vox amps around here then however..unlike the UK.
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Re: Some Jet Questions

Postby JimN » Sun Sep 23, 2018 12:52 pm

The first Stratocaster I ever saw hanging in a shop window (Bradley's Music, Lord St, Liverpool, in spring 1963: 168 guineas) was presented in Sonic Blue. I had assumed up till then that The Shadows played UK-made Vox guitars, so didn't connect this graceful machine to that group, though there was something about those lines, the elegance of the design and the sheer quality of the construction and finish which nevertheless spoke and beckoned to me. It was a few more weeks before I made the connection from a good quality photograph.

Although the Jaguar (used then by Jet Harris), Jazzmaster (Bruce on the first EP cover) and Jazz Bass were usually seen in sunburst, they were each occasionally in stock in FR (usually with a painted headstock). The Precision was seen in FR and in Sonic Blue.

Other Fender models (Telecaster, Esquire, Musicmaster, Duosonic) were never seen in Liverpool at that time. They may have been more familiar on Charing Cross Road. Across the UK, the Telecaster didn't really become well-known until there was a boom in sales from 1964 onward following its use by Ray Davies of The Kinks. By 1966 and following a change of UK distributor, it was advertised (by Arbiter) as "The most desired guitar in the UK".

Precision Bass in Sonic Blue in 1963?

Easy: Image

Link to a better-quality image on the web: http://www.groovinrecords.co.uk/weblinks/The%20Almost%20Blues/Big%203%20at%20Cavern.jpg
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