This late 1961, early 1962 Fender Stratocaster is a very unique specimen.
When Fender was shipping the guitars to its dealers around the world, such as Casale Bauer in Italy, and Selmer or JMI in England, it was very typical for them to receive special orders for custom colors from customers, that Fender couldn’t handle from their Headquarters in California. Please keep in mind that international shipments were not at all as fast as today, and an international order would take up to one or two months to deliver.
In these situations the Fender Dealers around the world would simply spray the brand new guitars finished in classic Sunburst with a thin coat of the desired color for the local customers or dealers.
This is a well documented procedure for the “Selmers Reds” in England, to please the Marvin fans, or the “Black” telecaster paisleys and blue florals that were painted over by Bauer since dealer couldn’t sell them.
This Sonic Blue strat shows evidence of unaltered cavities, still has the wood “hair” in the worm route, and the painter really took care to respect the original body finish since they put tape over the body date and they put a tape (with probably the indication for the ordered custom color) in the control cavity route. The Sonic Blue color is the correct, pre 65 one without any clear coat on it, so it’s not yellowed at all.
This is the perfect addition to any Fender Custom Color Collection and a killer sounding one !!!
