Matt's Blog

Welcome to my 3 part series about frets! I know it’s been a while since my last blog installment but with things insanely busy at the shop, it’s be...

While a plethora of companies manufacture fretwire these days, some are certainly more popular than others. Jim Dunlop, Jescar, Stew Mac, Sanko, an...

We handle a lot of refrets at the shop these days so we have gotten well-versed in helping people find the right fret for them. If you are researching what frets are right for you guitar, then you have come to the right place! 

Fact: Size Matters! However, when it comes to frets, only two dimensions matter to the Player and they are height and width.

There are plenty of terms in the Guitar World that warrant some explanation. This time around, we cover the Scalloped Fingerboard! A rarely seen odd-bird spec, popularized by Yngwie Malmsteen and Ritchie Blackmore. The scalloped board require a different touch, much lighter than what the average player doles out. 

The Fender Custom Shop Texas Special Stratocaster Pickup Set gained notoriety thanks to their installation in the Stevie Ray Vaughan signature Stratocaster. From that point in the early 1990s, this pickup set has gone on to be the go-to for anybody looking for a screaming hot but still decidedly single-coil sounding pickup. We love them so much we have been ordering the hardwired Custom Shop version in our 61 Stratocaster’s for quite sometime! So let’s dive in and learn all that we can about this much loved pickup set that got so popular, they even made a set for Tele’s!

In a world where the specs of a guitar are combed over with a discerning eye, there is a long list of terms one must familiarize themselves with, a...

The American Professional II is available as a Stratocaster, Telecaster, and Jazzmaster for the electric guitar and the venerable Precision and Jazz models for the electric bass. These instruments are the next step in the evolutionary process of the American Professional Series with cool stuff to explore and discuss with every spec. So let us dive in and learn everything we need to know about the American Professional II Series!

We have decided to add another addition to the Music Gallery Family of Fender Custom Shop models with our new 1969 Stratocaster Journeyman Relic! We took our favorite CBS-era Strat from 1969 and had the Fender Custom Shop build them with some modern specs, hand-wound pickups, and a super light Journeyman Relic finish! Read on to learn all there is to know about this wonderful new addition to the Music Gallery Family!

In this Blog Post, I will run you through our refret process which includes having the fingerboard planed and frets level and crowned in our Plek Machine. You'll see before and after photo evidence how just how bad the neck was versus how it turned out. Our process is insanely quick and far more accurate than any job done by hand. So go ahead and click, why doncha, to literally see what the Plek Machine is capable of!

The Fender Custom Shop '69 Stratocaster Pickup Set is our best selling set of aftermarket pickups. Why? Jimi Hendrix, that's why! These pickups NAI...

The Fender Custom Shop Fat ‘50s Stratocaster Pickup Set has been one of our most ordered set for years! Using the earliest Strat pickups as the foundation for the Fat 50s, then adding some modern features like RWRP (or Reverse Wound, Reverse Polarity) that allows for noiseless operation in positions 2 and 4, and hand beveling the staggered magnets for excellent balance across strings. The Enhanced Bass Response of the Fat 50s is something to behold! Never before has your Single Coil Loaded Strat sounded so beefy!

The Fender Custom Shop Handwound Ancho Poblano Stratocaster Pickup set is quickly becoming a favorite for players who prefer some heat from their single coil’s. The Ancho Poblano set is rooted deeply in Fender’s Vintage World with Alnico 3 Magnets in the neck and middle (the same magnets from the 1955 set) and Formvar wires while enamel coating on the bridge magnets and Alnico 5 magnets really turn up the heat! The Handwound Ancho’s took a classic Fender recipe and added some seriously smokey heat to the mix!