MIKE ELDRED: Hi. Mike Eldred from the Fender Custom Shop this year at the July 2005 NAMM Show. Some of the things we brought, we like to step out of the regular arena of just Stratocasters, Telecasters, and things like that, and we brought them out. In the Fender Custom Shop, we push the envelope. We make instruments for Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, personal instruments for all of our artists, and we also push the envelope for design and cross-promotion with other unique artistic opportunities.

And one of the things we brought to this NAMM Show is the -- Wes Humpston is the original Dogtown artist who did all the Dogtown skateboards back in the ‘70s. He’s really famous for the cross, the Dogtown cross, and a couple of other things. We sat down with him and we asked him to do three guitars and have them hand-paint them, but he also made matching skateboards for each one so the design on the skateboard matches the guitar. They’re sold as a set. They’re hand-painted, they’re hand-signed by Wes Humpston himself. Each one of them comes with a book from Wes Humpston that’s coming out that goes through all of his Dogtown art. The original Dogtown skateboards are going from $8,000 to $10,000 if you can find them, and this has all of his art in, and it also features -- In the back here, it also features the guitars. It’s in his book. So, we have those here, and there’s three, again, collectible instruments.

Also, we did a thing with [PH] Shepherd Ferry who’s the artist who does [PH] Obey. You’ll see it’s a performance art thing that’s around, and they’ll put like faces of Andre the Giant around and everything. We sat down with him, and he’s done 12 Teles, 12 Stratocasters, each one of them hand-done. They come with a DVD interview with Shepherd, and each one’s unique and they’re a limited run of 25 guitars total, so we’ve had those there.

This is a good example of some of the stuff that we do at the Custom Shop. It’s called -- we call it the Rack ’Em Up Tele, and what this guitar -- The motif of this guitar is a pool-playing rat that’s on the front of it, but it has billiard balls inlays on the fingerboard, it says Rack ‘Em Up and mother of pearl on the fingerboard. It has an eight ball for a knob, and one of the things that’s really cool about the eight ball is when you press the eight it’s an S1 switch that splits the back pickup. This also comes with custom-made pool cue from the Fender Custom Shop and whole set of pool balls with the Custom Shop logo laser-engraved on it.

Down here we have a whole run of 100-piece runs that we’re doing. They’re all unique instruments, each one of them is a limited number, a hundred pieces or 200-piece run, and they’re made for a limited time. They feature unique features such as this is a very rare Fender color that is called Fireman Silver that we don’t do a whole lot of, and it’s a 200-piece run of those, and then it just goes through because each one of them is completely different. This also shows you some of the uniqueness that we do at the Fender Custom Shop with inlay, hand carve. It’s all hand carved into the ash body itself with rope inlay or rope carving all the way around the side of the body and the top of the neck.

This is also a hundred-piece run painted by [PH] Pam Molina, who designed the Fender Custom Shop logo. She has also designed the Harley Davidson Stratocaster, the Jimi Hendrix Monterey Pop Festival Stratocaster that we did, and the Marilyn Monroe Stratocaster that this is the fourth in the series that she’s done for us. Each one ends in a psychedelic theme, and they’re all unique and limited and it comes with a DVD interview with the artist as well.

Something like this is done by an artist named [PH] Dave Newman which is all decoupage art and he’s done a matching case with rope inlay and rope inlay around the back of the guitar as well.

This is our Flathead series. This is made popular by the guy in Slipknot, and each one has an EMG pickup, cross-piston nickel silver inlays in the fingerboard.

Then we also have the Showmaster Elites which are hand-voiced pickups with Seymour Duncan and Victor Johnson from Sammy Hagar’s band, and they’re set neck guitars with maple tops and mahogany backs and necks.

Down here, you get an example of some of the guitars we make for artists. This is a replica of Eric Clapton’s personal instrument. It’s in Mercedes Blue, this one, and it’s just like the guitar that Eric plays on stage every night.

Another one of our artists we have is Jeff Beck and this is an exact reproduction of the guitars that we make for Jeff Beck to play, and same pickups, same neck shape, everything, so. We also have a Seymour Duncan [PH] Esquire here which we worked with Seymour Duncan to develop a pickup and neck shape and everything that he likes as a personal instrument, so we have one of those there.

A Robin Trower's Signature Stratocaster that’s exactly like the guitar that Robin Trowers is playing for us now, and a couple of other one-offs and think that’s about it.