Custom Shop

What's the main melody doing here? What's the main melody? Because I can do an octave of music. Anyone have a tuner? What is it? I think it'simple. Simple. Simple. 6. Ready? Yep. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 3, 4, 5, 6. 3, 4, 5, 6. 3, 4, 5, 6. 3, 4, 5, 6. 3, 4, 5, 6. 3, 4, 5, 6. 3, 4, 5, 6. 3, 4, 5, 6. 3, 4, 5, 6. 3, 4, 5, 6. Guitars have always been such a big part of my life and such a centerpiece to my free time whenever I had it. I think on this show there were sometimes the thing that would keep you sane at the end of the day. The one thing that was my thing from the beginning was how great it would be to have guitars that were inspired by the show. One day we happened to be talking to Andy Mooney, CEO of Fender and I was almost afraid to mention it because I didn't want him to say no. But I said, what do you think about doing Game of Thrones guitar? 3. So initially the discussion with Fender was whether to do something more mass produced or whether to do something more custom and be more of a one of a kind item. Once we hit on the idea of doing 3 guitars, one for each of the major houses in this show, Stark, Lannister and Targaryen, then we realized that it had to be something that was special and the guys at the Custom Shop, Ron Thorne, especially really swung for the fences and made something truly unique. I'm Ron Thorne, a principal master builder at the Fender Custom Shop. When I came into the meeting there was already some renderings, maybe 5 or 6 of each house and they all looked fabulous. There were some changes along the way but for the most part they stayed fairly true to the initial renderings. Just tweaking it in a way that can be achieved, done, built here in the shop. The Telecaster is the instr It's the instr They have that integrity, they have that no-nonsense approach that seems perfect for a Telecaster. The House Stark Telecaster has a maple neck with an ebony fretboard. They all do. They all feature a first fret sigil inlay and these, we're calling them the Game of Thrones O in choral. That is shared on all three instr A two-piece swamp-ash body has sterling silver perfling on the front and back with a weathered inside the sterling. The control plate and the pickguard with the embossed dire wolf are out of nickel silver, a raw steel telebridge plate, sterling silver dire wolf first fret inlay, hand engraved vol And these are the hand wound Josefina Blackguard 5051 pickups. It feels This is the House Lannister Jaguar. Features a two-piece older body with 24 karat gold leaf top and back, gold plated control plates and pickguard with the lion engraved on the pickguard also. Features the same gold leafing on the headstock, brass first fret hand cut and hand engraved inlay and brass position markers. The pickups are Josefina hand wound Fat 50 Stratocaster pickups under these nice lipstick covers to match the rest of it. This is actually a middle position in the neck and a bridge in the bridge, of course. A hand engraved control knobs with the lion and also the neck plate is a hand engraved neck plate along with slotted head screws used throughout. The Lannister Jaguar has a fancier feel. The Jaguar was the fender that had the most ornamentation and embellishment on it. I feel When it was sort of a larger Celtic design, I figured I'll just hand carve that. But then as it got more intricate and a lot of filigree and Sheridan, it was very intense by the time it was finalized, we opted to laser etch it through the gold leaf. And that was a first. We did some test pieces and it came out great. Once it lasered through the gold leafing into the wood, we then back filled it with red, Dakota red paint. It looks extremely rich and opulent. This is the House Targaryen Stratocaster. Features an older body with dragon scale carvings front and back. This is a hand tooled leather pickguard with the Targaryen three headed dragon, sterling silver, dragon first fret. The pickups are Josefina hand wound Texas specials, all black hardware with a vintage trim. If you're going to have a dragon guitar, I think you're going to need to have a tremolo. You're going to need to be able to swoop and whoosh and dive bomb and make sound effects and some special effects. A traditional Stratocaster body, approximately 20 minutes front and back. That's the runtime on the CNC. The Targaryen Strat, 19 hours approximately for just the scale work. 11 hours to machine the scales on the back and eight hours to machine the scales on the top. The most difficult instr It's difficult. There's a few more things I could do, but I think it's enough now where it's not overkill. There'still a guitar and there'still some elements that are pure Fender guitar, the tuners. We didn't mess with the tuners at all. We could have put dragon heads on each button or what have you and it's I think that's too much. So it's just finding the line of art and still a guitar. Walking into Ron Schatz seeing him working on that guitar, it really was almost like a flashback to walking into our cost It was very reminiscent of that. Studying the armor and the clothing, the cost It's amazing. So trying to get the guitars to look Yeah! There you go. There you go. Let's do an alb