Few people in the world know more about Fender sparkle finishes than our resident vintage guitar veteran David Davidson. Here, he takes us through the oft-misunderstood history of Fullerton’s most lustrous axes
Sparkle finish guitars are among the rarest and most enigmatic of Fender instruments. Decked out in metallic paint and embellished with metal flake, these dazzling beauties, though striking in appearance, often carry a mysterious past. While they are considered a true Fender finish, for a long time these special paint jobs were tasked to third parties. As custom finishes in the realist sense they extended not only outside the boundaries of Fender’s automotive-inspired custom colour chart but beyond the limits of the factory itself.Perfectly encapsulating the golden era of American guitars, cars and movies, these glittering vintage rarities are a jewel in California’s cultural crown.
“It was mostly about the hot-rod culture in California,” begins guitar guru David Davidson of Well Strung Guitars. “People associate sparkle finishes with surf, but it really wasn’t the surf thing so much as it was about the car culture in Southern California. That really was a big deal at the time, and Fender was right there in the middle of hot-rod country.
“They were in Fullerton, California, and all that stuff was happening around them. So, naturally, the idea of painting your guitar to look like a hot-rod was a cool thing. There were a lot of bands with hot-rod names, and groups were writing songs about cars. There was Ronny & The Daytonas, for example, and The Rip Chords who wrote Hey Little Cobra about the Shelby Cobra. Dick Dale wrote about cars. As did The Beach Boys. So having guitars that kind of resembled cars was a really big deal.”
Fuelling the obsession were the movies of the time, which often featured cars decked out in colourful, glittering finishes. Before long, sparkle finish guitars were also appearing on the silver screen.
“There were a lot of car movies and beach movies made back in the late 50s and early 60s,” explains David. “Typically, there’s a scene where a guy pulls up in something blue sparkle or red metal flake, or green metal flake like the ’62 Jaguar [pictured here on page 87]. So, as you can imagine, people started saying, ‘Hey, I want my guitar painted like that!’
“It starts to hit a fever with Ann-Margret in [the 1963 feature film] Bye Bye Birdie. That movie features a highly customised Fender Jaguar. It’s unbelievable. It’s black with a gold pickguard and controls, and it has this big gold sparkle ribbon painted on that says ‘Conrad Birdie’. They made several different guitars for the producers to look at and decide which guitar
