Our NAMM experience started the night before the main gates opened, as we had been invited to Fender’s Custom Shop event; an annual occurrence where Fender gathers a select number of dealers and collectors for a private viewing of some of their finest stock. The Fender booth was packed – not only with people, but also with guitars. Hundreds of examples of Custom Shop guitars were on show – some being die-hard classics, and others, guitars dressed in the some of the weirdest, most characterful and wonderful finishing livery you could imagine. In an interesting raffle system, dealers calmly fight tooth and nail for the guitars they are eyeing up this year; making their mark by simply inserting a card with their details into the strings of the guitar they want. At the end of the event, Fender collects all the dealer names associated with a particular guitar, and picks one at random, with each guitar being assigned a winner. And you can bet we had our eyes set on some of the gems on offer. One giant raffle later, and we are proud to say that we won a 2019 Limited Edition Roasted Tomatillo Relic Strat in Taomatillo Green our very own 2019 NAMM-exclusive Custom Shop. And it’s a true beauty. You can expect to see this guitar gracing our Custom Shop wall in a few months. In the meantime you can check it out or pre-order it here
