— After announcing a highly-anticipated collaboration with one of rock’s most legendary guitar players – Jimmy Page – Fender Musical Instruments Corporation (FMIC) today released photos and design features revealing the four Artist Signature guitars modeled after Page’s famous 1959 Fender® Telecaster. The design reveal arrives in tandem with the 50th anniversary of Led Zeppelin I (January 12, 1969), on which Page played his famed “Dragon” Telecaster, bringing to life some of rock’s most iconic anthems. Two models will be produced in the Fender Custom Shop – dubbed the “Limited Edition Jimmy Page Telecaster Set”; the set will be available at select authorised showcase dealers globally, beginning March 2019. Additionally, two models will be made on Fender’s production lines, and released in Autumn/Winter 2019 – giving fans and collectors the chance to own a piece of history.
Few guitars are as important to the history of music culture as the Telecaster Jimmy Page used to create the iconic, genre-defining riffs of Led Zeppelin and, in its earlier days, music in The Yardbirds. Originally received as a gift from guitarist Jeff Beck, he used this 1959 Telecaster to unleash his larger-than-life riffage and fierce soloing upon the world. In February 1967, to give a kinetic element, he added eight round mirrors to the body of the guitar. By mid-1967 he decided to strip the instrument down to bare wood and drawing on his art school training, repaint it himself with what became the iconic “Dragon” design. Page partially painted over the stripped 1959 Telecaster with darts and curls of green, orange, yellow, blue and red in a pattern that formed something of a swirling, psychedelic dragon. It was featured on the Anderson Theatre show “Yardbirds 68.”
Among the four Artist Signature models will be two highly collectible, limited edition Fender Custom Shop versions masterbuilt by Fender Custom Shop Master Builder veteran Paul Waller – one with mirrors and the other with the painted dragon. With each priced at A$39,999, the set will be available for local authorised showcase dealers to purchase and then sell together or separately to consumers. Beginning March 2019, only 50 units of each Fender Custom Shop model will be made available; they include Page’s personal touches, such as a handwritten signature on the headstock of the mirror model, as well as hand-painted flourishes on the guitar body’s dragon artwork and personally-signed Certificates of Authenticity for both models.
In addition to the Fender Custom Shop models, Fender will roll out both mirror and painted versions from its production lines in Autumn and Winter 2019, respectively. Priced from A$2,499 – $4,699. These will not be hand-signed or hand-painted by the artist, although Page did advise Fender first-hand on creation of the design to make sure the guitars were true-to-spec of the original Telecaster.
