THE MASTER OF ‘OLD’

Dale Wilson is a Master Builder in Fender’s Custom Shop and one of the world’s top aged-guitar makers. He told us how he approaches the craft back in 2016... “I love old guitars, so I always try to recreate them as accurately as I possibly can,” Dale Wilson told us during a visit to Fender’s Custom Shop three years ago. “So I’m always on this quest to learn more about how they feel, how they look, how they sound. I’m trying to recreate those guitars – the texture, how they feel when you’re holding them, and how they look.”

We then asked him how he ensured his more heavily aged guitars were authentic recreations of genuine wear patterns, rather than just arbitrarily distressed finishes.

“It’s pictures,” he explained. “I have a catalogue. There’s hundreds and hundreds of old guitars in it. Maybe it’s something somebody’s selling on eBay or whatever – I’ll search them out and save the ones that I really like in a special folder. Then I’ll use those pictures to try to mix and match the wear authentically. I’m always on a quest to make it look and feel more real – not necessarily more ‘heavy’.”

Dale also drew attention to the subtleties of ageing the finer details of a Relic finish.

“You can scrape paint off a body, but the surrounding paint is still going to [look new]. So it’s about then getting that finish to where you can see the grain beneath and just making it super, super thin, so it feels like it’s old. We’ve been working hard to mimic old guitars like that... Not overdone, just really super-thin... kind of finding the balance that makes it really pop.”