Ordering a Fender Custom shop

TINMAN82

For my taste, Coda spec them best. My ‘61 strat has a perfect 65C neck and ancho poblano pickups (courtesy of Coda and purchased online without trying). It’s the 3tsb one in my avatar. It’s a guitar for life. I wouldn’t spend £1500 plus extra so I could pick things from a catalogue, unless it had to be some weird custom colour.

meltedbuzzbox

TINMAN82 said:

For my taste, Coda spec them best. My ‘61 strat has a perfect 65C neck and ancho poblano pickups (courtesy of Coda and purchased online without trying). It’s the 3tsb one in my avatar. It’s a guitar for life. I wouldn’t spend £1500 plus extra so I could pick things from a catalogue, unless it had to be some weird custom colour.

Doug definitely stocks a good fender. Especially offset ones

BlueStrat

Go for the CS.
You only live once, treat yourself from time to time. Money spent on a nice guitar is an investment in yourself, as you get pleasure playing it. 

The few quid lost if you ever sell its nothing compared to money lost on the car depreciating away on your drive

imalrightjack

BlueStrat said:

The few quid lost if you ever sell its nothing compared to money lost on the car depreciating away on your drive

That’s always my reference point. 

GoldenEraGuitars

@adam1990 your post is full of questions that could be easily answered by someone at Peach, Coda, World Guitars (?) or GAK. Give one of them a call and find out all you need to know.

Be sure to research before you call though.. it’s always good to know the basic spec that you want ie alder body, sonic blue, 9.5 radius neck etc. 

As with any “custom” build just be wary that you might not like your chosen combination when it arrived unless you’ve played a similar one in store. And if you’ve got £3-4K to spend then go for it, if it’s your 30th coming up then why the hell not.

Teetonetal

Regardless of what you eventually do, absolutely go and try a lot of CS shop guitars from the various CS ranges. They are not all equal by any stretch and when one is under the hands you may / may not decide it is worth the investment.

As an owner of a CS tele, I would honestly say they are a lot of money for what they actually are. For me it was all about the paint job rather than the spec of the guitar, I got something fairly unique and I like that. 

When I was looking, I did spec one out, I think with Andertons. Came to 7k (I wanted a paisley hollow body tele) and the following year they released a limited edition one at around 5k IIRC that was almost identical.

Whitecat

That’s the thing - sometimes if you compromise something small you can find what you’re after “off the peg” and decide whether it’s great or not up front. No disappointment. I’ve owned three Fender CS guitars - sold one recently, hanging onto two, both not my “design” but both excellent examples and very much up my street anyway and probably both have ideas on them that I would not have thought of myself, which is cool. Also, the one I recently sold was a cracker too tbh, it was simply a “too many guitars” thing.

adam1990

GoldenEraGuitars said:

@adam1990 your post is full of questions that could be easily answered by someone at Peach, Coda, World Guitars (?) or GAK. Give one of them a call and find out all you need to know.

Be sure to research before you call though.. it’s always good to know the basic spec that you want ie alder body, sonic blue, 9.5 radius neck etc. 

As with any “custom” build just be wary that you might not like your chosen combination when it arrived unless you’ve played a similar one in store. And if you’ve got £3-4K to spend then go for it, if it’s your 30th coming up then why the hell not.

This is exactly what I'm trying to pin down at the moment is the spec. I know it's going to be based around a 65 Jazzmaster with an ash body narrow tall frets and fatter C shape neck 7.25 radius (poss a John English) journey man relic. 

I've managed to come up with the spec with what I like about other guitars that I own or others I have played. I've played a few CS guitars at GAK and Andertons which all have been really nice guitars but they just don't get offset's in often enough so think I will need to plan in a trip to Peach guitars as they seam to have a few most of the time . 

It sure is my 30th so a good excuse to treat myself 

Philly_Q

I did a custom order a few years ago (from Coda) and the price came out pretty much exactly the same as a new off-the-shelf one would have been at the time (about £2,700 in those days).  There are lots of options but most of them are no additional cost.

However, I agree with everyone who suggests travelling around, trying all the different neck shapes etc.  And unless you want something which is quite simply not available off-the-shelf, you might be lucky and find a keeper.

clarkefan

BlueStrat said:

Go for the CS.
You only live once, treat yourself from time to time. Money spent on a nice guitar is an investment in yourself, as you get pleasure playing it. 

The few quid lost if you ever sell its nothing compared to money lost on the car depreciating away on your drive

We're all different. Love the sentiment but for me personally 4k is big money; the concept of buying a *new* guitar, for 4k, and immediately pissing away what, a thousand pounds, is just inconceivable.  Ditto cars.

I do love the idea of hitting Coda though, discovering that my thoughts on colour, woods, pickups, blah blah, went out the window when I played one chord and it was game over