Sunburst Fender Custom Shop Strat | Kenny Wayne Shepherd
This guitar was built for Kenny by Master Builder J.W. Black at the Fender Custom Shop in 1997. Mr. Black built this guitar as a gift to Kenny for his birthday. This guitar's intended purpose was to be an alternate, or even possibly a replacement, for Kenny's beloved 1961 Fender Stratocaster in the event that Kenny ever chose not to take his '61 on tour. This particular guitar has several unique features, one of the most noteworthy being it's experimental one-of-a-kind finish that was designed to age very rapidly and develop a characteristic known as "checking", which usually only happens after many years of natural aging, curing and temperature fluctuations. With this experimental finish applied to the body of the guitar combined with Kenny's aggressive playing style, this guitar would allow Kenny to naturally develop the same wear and tear associated with his original 1961 Stratocaster at a much faster rate than usual and eventually achieve the same road worn, broken-in appearance of his original 1961 Stratocaster, which took many years of playing to create on this new guitar in a very short amount of time. It is believed that this is the only guitar Fender ever built using this particular finish. Other notable features are a left-handed bridge and tremolo system, rosewood slab fingerboard, custom tapered neck profile, custom wound single coil pickups and staggered vintage tuners. All of these unique features combined with the classic 3-tone Sunburst gives this guitar a striking appearance and a powerful sound.