There are still great vintage Fenders to be discovered. My latest acquisition, which will of course be featured in the book, is an all original early 1964 Musicmaster in gold and red sparkle.
Fender sparkle guitars are exceptionally rare (see photos of a 1965 Blue Sparkle Jazzmaster in an earlier blog post) and each one is slightly different than the others as many were made as one offs for trade shows and artists.
The application of sparkle finishes deviates from the application of other factory finishes (i.e. sunbursts and custom colors). Many stories abound about why they are different, such as sparkle finishes were shot down the street at a car repair shop because the paint gun nozzles at the Fender factory were too small to apply the small aluminum metal flecks that give these finishes their sparkle. Regardless of the production techniques used to apply these finishes they are counted as the only true Fender "custom" colors.
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