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1996 Fender USA Custom Shop D'Aquisto Elite Hand Built Free Shipping

Estimated price for orientation: 5 999 $

Category: Acoustic Electric Guitars
Class:











Description
Brand: D'Aquisto Series: Elite
Model: Custom Model Year: 1996


Fantastic like new, easy to play, and excellent sounding 1996 USA Fender D'Aquisto Elite Custom Shop series, serial #4 with Custom Shop certificate. Hand-built by master luthier Stephen Stern under the guidance of James L. D'Aquisto. This was Jimmy 's last major project, he died in 1995 when visiting Fender as a paid consultant for this series. I purchased this new at George's Guitars in Orlando at Disney World in 1997 about 2 years after I saw D'Aquisto guitar values more than double following his death.  According to the shop manager, Jimmy personally selected woods for the first guitars, and guided the initial build to ensure the instruments would meet his exceptional standards.  I understand that 32 instruments were completed by Stephen Stern between 1995 to 1998. True to Jimmy's standards the guitar does not have much metal content and is mostly constructed of the finest hand carved woods available with some of the choicest flame maple neck, sides, and back, excellent spruce carved top, fine ebony fingerboard, carved tailpiece, bridge, and tuner buttons.  A Kent Armstrong hand wound custom floating pickup and fine tuning volume knob on the rosewood pickguard provides the guitarist with precision adjustments yet the ability to roll it quickly for more coarse adjustments. The nice full neck plays like a dream throughout the 25-1/2" scale length and generous 1-13/16" nut width, and has no fret wear. I immediately spotted this guitar on the top row of several hundred guitars, and the salesman was surprised I picked out the best guitar in the shop. I played it and it made me sound (somewhat) like Joe Pass as a crowd gathered, needless to say the quality of this performance and response was very unusual for me, and I had to have it despite the very high price with no discounts. Please note this guitar is the highest presentation quality and made-in-USA by hand; it is not the 1980s Japanese version which is constructed with laminated wood and much cheaper factory-made guitar that are still excellent instruments now often selling for over $2,000 to $3,000. In essence this is a D'Aquisto Excel guitar with Fender on the headstock. The guitar comes with all case candy including the original certificate, cowboy leather strap, and fantastically cool looking white tolex original case (looks a bit like a Gretsch "cowboy" case), and is setup with the finest Thomastik Infeld flat wound strings that play like butter. This is like a new D'Aquisto over 20 years old with select aged woods built by a master luthier for a fraction of the price. Nearly impossible to find a nicer one!!