CUSTOM SHOP LAST WALTZ STRAT

History, art and the Stratocaster collide in this celebratory, limitededition replica of Robbie Robertson’s fabled hot-rod guitar. It also illustrates how the modding culture kicked off way back in the 70s…

At its heart, this is a ’54-spec Strat: twopiece ash body, one-piece maple neck/ fingerboard with a diagonal grain (rift sawn), halfway between slab sawn and quarter sawn. Obviously, its main modification is the antiqued bronze finish. It’s not ‘dipped in bronze’ but is an electro-plated finish (usually employed to coat your kids’ first pairs of shoes, for example) that is antiqued to offer a vivid, aged copper appearance. The coating is thin – you can clearly see the ash’s grain and numerous bashes and dings, all replicated from Robbie’s original – but adds weight. The last Custom Shop Strat we looked at, the El Diablo, for example, weighed in at 3.38kg (7.44lb); this one is 4.09kg (9lb).

The second major modification concerns the pickups. Robertson, back then a Telecaster player, felt the Strat’s middle pickup got in his way so he had it moved adjacent to the slanted bridge pickup. To replicate the original, Fender Master Builder Todd Krause selected a left-handed (to match the magnet stagger) mid-50s-spec single coil for the moved ‘middle’ position, a ’54-spec single coil in neck (both with black fibre bases), and a’69 spec with grey base in the bridge position, all hand-wound, signed and dated by Custom Shop master pickup winder, Josephine Campos.

Oddly, in Fender’s literature it states this back pair are wired in parallel, like a split P-Bass pickup. But the two P-Bass coils are actually wired in series, as here, resulting in a beefy DC resistance (and output) of just over 10kohms. It’s an early example of a player wanting to beef up their Fender: “I always thought the back pickup could be a little warmer on Fenders…,” says Robbie, “but there was a power that came with this, too, that I really, really liked about it.”

Note, too, the trio of Tele-style knurled knobs for the master volume and individual pickup tone controls that Robertson preferred for swells to the smaller Strat knobs. The CTS pots replicate the (quite stiff ) feel of those on the original guitar and are all 250kohms; both tone controls (one for each pickup) have “late 60s/early 70s new old stock (NOS)” 0.047microfarad caps. Feel & Sounds Irrespective of the mods, the neck here is superb. Described as a 1954 ‘V’, the huge ‘U’ of many early Strats is reduced on the shoulders creating a hint of a V in the lower positions, less so in the upper portion, which just feels like a perfectly shaped big neck. It’s deep, too: 22.2mm at the 1st fret; 25.1mm at the 12th. While the fingerboard face has the correct vintage radius, the so-called ‘vintage-style’ frets feel (and measure) slightly bigger and provide a more positive playing experience. The relic’ing is quite mild with “wear beneath wear” on the fingerboard, says Fender, meaning that “the neck had been refinished at a point in its life and then absorbed even more playing miles”. Back and front it seems quite ‘clean’ with little wear-through, though it does look a little dirty under the gloss top coat.

With five springs, the vibrato is hard down on the body and there’s no upbend, giving stable tuning and maximum vibration transfer. But what does that bronze coating add to the recipe? Well, it’s the combination of parts we hear and it’s a fine-tasting dish. There’s a big, beefy powerful delivery from the bridge pair that, with a gained Marshall, could happily sit in a late 70s/early 80s hair metal band. Through a cranked Fender-style combo, it nails that slightly fruity rhythm/lead voice that Robertson has in The Last Waltz film. The mix isn’t quite as hollowed as a Tele; it pulls down the power but restores a little sparkle while the neck sounds like home: the lowest output voice is clean and twangy in the lower frequencies with slightly rounded but still percussive highs. Verdict This hugely valid, beautifully put-together oldschool instrument would make a seriously good ‘rock’ Strat, or a Strat for Tele players, at a more standard production level. Of course, in this 40-only run, with plenty of case candy, its price is no surprise: it’s a piece of historical art for the well-heeled collector. And while we’re sure you could order your own version based on these specs at a far lower cost, it’s a rather good pickup mod that many of us could add to our own Strats. Thanks, Robbie! [DB]