Construction and Design Variations
Several variations of Clapton's personal guitar were made by the Fender Custom Shop throughout the years, including fancy versions with ash bodies, quilted or maple tops, abalone dot position inlays, matching headstocks, gold hardware and white pearloid pickguards, made by Senior Master Builder J. W. Black. Many of these guitars were sold for charity auctions for the Crossroads Centre of Antigua, the drug and alcohol addiction rehabilitation facility founded on the small, idyllic Caribbean island in 1998. They include the Gold Leaf Stratocaster of 1996 (used during the Legends and Montserrat concerts in 1997) and the Crashocasters (signature model Stratocasters hand-painted by New York-based street artist John Matos, better known as Crash), used by Clapton from 2001 to 2004.
The Gold Leaf Stratocaster
The original Gold Leaf guitar was built by Fender Master Builder Mark Kendrick as a custom order for Eric Clapton at the time of the 50th Anniversary of the firm in 1996 and was Clapton's main instrument of choice during the Legends period in 1997. Clapton used the guitar for the last time during his One More Car, One More Rider world tour of 2001 before selling it to Christies for US $455,000.
The Fender Custom Shop reissued the Gold Leaf Stratocaster after 8 years of absence as a limited-edition run of 50 pieces. Each guitar was built to Eric's exacting specifications, with Fender's Vintage Noiseless pickups and a standard tone control instead of the Gold Lace Sensor pickups and TBX tone circuit (re-introduced in 2009) found on the original 1996 model.
Bacchus BST-GL
This Japanese tribute guitar is a faithful reproduction of the original Gold Leaf Stratocaster (using genuine USA electronics, Gold Fender Lace Sensor pickups and hardware - also available with Vintage Noiseless pickups as an option), except for the "Bacchus Custom Guitars" decal on the headstock rather than the "Fender" spaghetti logo found on Clapton's gold-finished signature model. The BST-GL was among the first tribute guitars made by Deviser at the Asuka factory in Japan; it was actually produced between 1998 and 2003. As of 2005, Bacchus no longer uses its own decal on the guitar's headstock, after few customers requested to have the Fender logo put on for reasons of authenticity.
Read more about this topic: Eric Clapton Stratocaster
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