Carefully chosen tonewoods

Before you ever plug the guitar in, the Fender Custom Shop Ltd. 1959 Strat Heavy Relic electric guitar sings with a resonance and clarity that is hard to find in lesser instruments. Its carefully selected 2-piece alder body is joined to a quartersawn, roasted maple neck. Not only does the roasting process mate with the quartersawn lumber for immense stability, but players at Sweetwater often mention how much more sustain and ring they hear from the woods.

The Heavy Relic treatment offers the look of a well-worn friend

The Fender Custom Shop’s Relic treatment starts with a period-correct nitrocellulose lacquer finish. Nitro finishes — standard back in the day — are significantly thinner than today’s polyurethane finishes, allowing the guitar to breathe. Relic’d guitars are then put through the aging process to give you an axe that looks and feels like it’s seen over five decades of frontline action. The process creates instruments that are spitting images of the originals. Without sneaking a look at the neck heel stamps, you’d be hard-pressed to distinguish the Fender Custom Shop Ltd. 1959 Strat Heavy Relic from the real deal.

Custom-wound Texas Special pickups

Overwound, vintage-style Strat pickups with plenty of grind, these custom-wound Texas Special single-coils are the pickups that defined the Texas sound. At the heart of the Texas Specials, you’ll find Alnico 5 magnets and enamel-coated magnet wire that give the pickups their throaty tone. Throw in a reverse-wound/reverse-polarity middle pickup for hum canceling in positions 2 and 4, and you’ve got a gritty-sounding Strat that kicks hard while retaining the Fender Custom Shop Ltd. 1959 Strat Heavy Relic’s trademark tone.

Fender Custom Shop Ltd. 1959 Strat Heavy Relic Electric Guitar Features:

• Powerful-sounding and -looking Stratocaster
• Super-stable quartersawn, roasted maple neck
• 3 custom-wound Texas Special single-coil pickups offer overwound tone
• Heavy Relic nitrocellulose finish allows the wood to breathe for a more open sound
• Jumbo 6100 fretwire makes wrangling the strings effortless
• Modern 9.5″ fretboard radius
• Genuine bone string nut