Fender Custom Shop Wildwood 10 Relic-Ready Ultralight 1957 Stratocaster

Wildwoodians, thank you for making Relic-Ready Custom Shop Fenders such a massive success! Your support has allowed our friends at Fender to really break new ground and create something fresh, exciting, and bold. However, given that the concept of a "Relic-Ready" finish is relatively new to the world of guitars, we wanted to add some notes to clarify what you should expect from a Relic-Ready instrument.

Relic-Ready finishes are much, much different than NOS finishes because they only have three or four layers of clear coat. Because the finish is so incredibly thin, Relic-Ready instruments begin the natural relic-ing process the moment they are fully assembled. Since these finishes are designed to wear quickly, sometimes Relic-Readies arrive at our shop having already begun their journey to vintage mojo. So, you can expect things like light dings, small spots where the finish has burned through, light scratching, and checking in the neck pocket. However, you can be assured that your instrument will NOT have any full-body checking from weather, deep scratches, or major dings/blemishes. As always, if you'd like more information about the condition of each particular serial, please don't hesitate to reach out for an in-hand description.

With Relic-Readies, our idea was to allow the player to write their own story into the finish of each guitar. But, sometimes the process of getting the guitar to you adds a little foreword to the finish to help you get started. For more information about all things Relic-Ready, read on!

Relic-Ready to Rumble

Over the years, Wildwood Guitars has sold thousands of relic’d Fender guitars. The incredible response that we’ve gotten from our Wildwood Tens is proof that most of the guitar-playing world loves instruments that marry modern convenience with vintage look, feel, and sound. We’ve also learned that there are plenty of pickers out there that like the distressed vintage look, but feel a little strange about playing a guitar that they didn’t relic themselves through everyday use. For these guitarists, each ding and scratch is a punctuation mark in the story of their instrument, and they want to be in charge of what happens in the tale of their axe.

Obviously, this is easier said than done. If you want to make an NOS finish look vintage through good ‘ol fashioned playwear, you usually have to play it for so long that it actually becomes vintage in the process. You could put your guitar in a trash bag of burned leaves and relic it yourself like one of my coworkers, but your house will smell horrible the moment you bring it inside. Frankly, few people have enough resources, energy, or training to make it look as good as the Fender Custom Shop’s builders can.

So, these players have been in a pickle until now. How do you make a new guitar look vintage without having to wait thirty years or resort to crazy schemes involving bags of burning leaves? Well, we at Wildwood Guitars are proud to introduce our answer: a new line of Wildwood Tens that we have dubbed “relic-readies.”

These Custom Shop creations are just like the heavy-relic guitars that have been a shop staple for years—same wood, same electronics, same hardware, and same outstanding build quality—except we snatch them away from Fender before they have a chance to actually do the relic job. The result is a guitar that accumulates wear-and-tear at an exponentially higher rate than normal. So, it’ll look like a guitar that’s been gigged for thirty years after just a couple birthdays. Finally, YOU can be the one to make your guitar look vintage!

After playing and ogling the first batch of these guitars, we feel confident that this line is easily one of the coolest collaborations in the history of our friendship with Fender’s Custom Shop! At Wildwood, we’ve been doing our best to tell our guitars’ stories as faithfully as we can for thirty-four years. Now, we are excited to step aside and give the reins to our exceptional customers. What sort of interesting tales will you carve into these finishes? We can’t wait to find out with you!

Ultra-Light and Ultra-Mighty

Wildwoodians, we are pleased to present the latest exciting entry in our Wildwood 10 line: the Ultra-Light series. Wildwood and our good friends at the Fender Custom Shop have a long and storied history of collaboration, and together we've tried to evolve and grow upon Fender's classic designs without compromising Fender's inimitable mojo and tone. Our Wildwood 10 series was an attempt to marry modern handfeel with vintage vibe, and it has been a runaway success. But, the fine folks at Fender are never content to rest on their laurels, so we put our heads together to figure out a way to make solid-body guitars lighter without chambering them. This was easier said than done, because our Wildwood 10s are already made from premium lightweight ash and alder.

So, the builders at Fender started experimenting with different tonewoods. Eventually, they tried building a guitar out of a wood called paulownia. Paulownia is a wood native to Asia and Europe that migrated over to America in 1844, and it was named to honor the queen consort of the Netherlands, Anna Pavlovna of Russia. For centuries, Chinese luthiers have built a wide variety of zither- and lute-like instruments (the guqin, guzheng, pipa, koto, and gayageum) using paulownia as a soundboard. These ancient builders chose their material well, because paulownia has an incredibly high strength-to-weight ratio, and it is supremely resonant. Because of this, the Fender Custom Shop team thought it might be a winner, and they made us a couple of Paulownia Wildwood 10s.

When we saw the first one arrived, it was so light that we were a little worried there was no guitar in the case after we unboxed it! Once we popped the latches, it was love at first sight. Appearance-wise, it's quite similar to ash, so it gave off classic vibes before anyone even played a note. And goodness gracious, great balls of fire, was it ever light! If you threw it up into the air, you could be forgiven for worrying that it might never come down. But, the real magic came when we plugged in. From the very first strum, we were astonished at its sonic power.

The Power of Paulownia

Paulownia is a different animal than alder or ash, but it is equally inspiring. When you play a guitar made out of paulownia, several things jump out at you immediately: huge acoustic resonance, supreme responsiveness, superb touch sensitivity, and hi-fi articulation. When we evaluate electric guitars at Wildwood, we always play them acoustically first, because we realized long ago that when an electric guitar sounds good with no electricity, it will sound excellent once you take your amp off standby. Paulownia definitely excels in this regard, and its harmonic fullness is immediately apparent from the first unamplified strum.

When you do plug in, paulownia's voice is quite impressive. These Ultra-Light Wildwood 10s have excellent overtone presence, superb clarity and transparency in the midrange, full bass response, and gorgeous sweet, singing high-end. But, their most impressive quality is their expressiveness. They respond to the player's input beautifully with a wonderfully articulate attack that captures all the nuances and subtleties of your technique. And, because they have a wide dynamic range, you can manipulate their tone with your hands quite easily. In a sense, they feel almost like extensions of your fingers. Needless to say, the Ultra-Light Wildwood 10s are a lot of fun to play, because they inspire you to dig deep and play as expressively as you can!

A Note About Sustainability

As a bonus to its spectacular sonic strengths, paulownia is also quite sustainable. It grows almost as fast as bamboo, it's remarkably easy to care for, and it is ready for harvest after less than a decade; in other words, it is a textbook renewable resource. And, after the tree falls, it regrows itself from its existing root system, which mitigates many of the erosion concerns that arise from logging practices. Paulownia is a dynamite tonewood, and it's also very friendly to this big ball of dirt and water that we're hurtling through space together on.

The Perfect 10

Years ago, we approached our friends at the Fender Custom Shop with a proposal: would they build us guitars that combined the mojo of a true-to-vintage reissue with modern handfeel and comfy modern ergonomics? They were enthused about the idea, and the Wildwood 10 was born. Thanks to the Custom Shop’s incredible craftsmanship and artistry, these guitars look gorgeous, sound killer, and play like butter.

Each of these Custom Shop creations features a thin fifties-style nitrocellulose finish, which allows the voice of the resonant hand-selected tonewoods to shine through. They also have hand-wound Custom Shop pickups that are sure to inspire you to reach new heights on your sonic journey. Wildwood 10s feel great in your hands, too. Their modern 10” radius is suitable for a wide variety of styles and techniques, and their 6105 narrow-tall frets allow you to expend less energy with your left hand, especially when bending strings. To top it all off, they come with a limited edition Dealer Select Wildwood 10 hardshell case and a certificate of authenticity.

Fun Times in '57

Nineteen fifty-seven was a banner year for the Fender Stratocaster. Though the Stratocaster became a runaway hit after hitmakers like Buddy Holly toted them on stage, Leo Fender’s tireless commitment to excellence led him to introduce a number of improvements to the Stratocaster’s design. In a quest to cater to players' demands, he introduced a soft V-shaped neck profile, and he started building some of the bodies out of alder. Our Wildwood 10 1957 Stratocasters pay homage to Leo Fender’s relentless work ethic by replicating the glories of the original heavenly ’57s. We have a wide variety of finishes with various types of relic-ing and lots of neck profiles, so we’re sure you’ll be able to find a ’57 that speaks to you. We invite you to browse our selection and experience the myriad delights the Wildwood 10 1957 Stratocaster has to offer.

Pickup Rundown

We believe that the Wildwood 10 Strat pickups our friends at Fender wind for us are some of the finest single-coils in the world. Here's a quick rundown of what makes them tick. They're slightly underwound, which gives them exceptional dynamic response and touch sensitivity. You can really alter your sound based on how hard you're hitting, which makes for a wonderfully expressive playing experience. However, they are wound with thicker wire like Fender did in the sixties, which gives them a little more power and guts despite being underwound. As a result, their voice is similar to vintage Strat pickups we love with lots of bell-like chime and vocal response, but with a little extra warmth and muscle.

Although they are not exactly the same as a real vintage example, we think they capture the magic sound of a great vintage Strat, giving you access to the iconic sound that shaped countless classic records. We have no doubt they will make your heartstrings resonate!