OK, here’s a pretty special guitar.possible part x This is a 2005 Fender Limited Edition Mary Kaye Stratocaster, Masterbuilt by Yuriy Shishkov with the Closet Classic finish.Fender built this Limited Release guitar in 2005 only, with an original MSRP of $7,700. This particular instrument was ordered by a dealer and put in his closet until I acquired it recently. It is absolutely in as-new condition. It weighs less than 7 ½ pounds, rings like a play and looks and sounds amazing.It comes with two COAs, one signed by Mary Kaye herself prior to her death in 2007. It also has all the swag, including a photo of Mary Kaye and her band, CD, strap and bag of goodies, as well as the Fender Custom Shop Limited Release OHSC. This is as close to a perfect example of this model as you will ever find. This is an as-new, no-excuses, perfect and highly collectible Strat. You almost never see these up for sale. Go to eBay and do a search for Fender Masterbuilt Stratocasters and you’ll find a lot of them are $6,000 or more right now — and those aren’t Limited Edition models. For that matter, try to find one of these Limited Edition Mary Kaye models. They just don’t change hands very often. This is a spectacular and rare guitar that I hope will find a good home with someone who will appreciate it.From the Fender press release about this model:Mary Kaye descended from Hawaiian royalty and was a direct descendent of Queen Liliuokalani, Hawaii 's last reigning monarch. With her band, The Mary Kaye Trio, Mary was hot property back in 1956. The Rock-N-Roll explosion had just happened and the band won many admirers, among them Elvis Presley and Sammy Davis Jr. During the '50's and '60's, Mary and her band became a regular act on the Las Vegas strip.As a female guitarist, Mary Kaye was unique and so was the guitar she played."In the early '50s, Fender put out a Stratocaster, which was white ash wood with gold fittings. It didn't have a name on it -- just Fender," said Mary Kaye. "We did some movies for Howard Koch at Paramount. I told Fender that we were doing the movies, they sent over the Stratocaster and I played it in the movie Cha Cha Cha Boom. There was a lot of publicity. There was a particular picture with the three of us. I had the Stratocaster and Frankie (Mary's late partner, Frankie Ross) had a Fender amplifier in front of him. The picture went around the world. Instead of customers asking for a white guitar with gold fittings, they said -- 'I want the guitar that Mary Kaye was playing.' All of a sudden the guitar became known as the Mary Kaye Stratocaster."The new Fender Custom Shop Mary Kaye Tribute Stratocaster guitar features a select ash body with a thin, White Blonde nitrocellulose Closet Classic finish, a hard-rock maple neck and gold hardware. As an added feature, Fender installed a set of pickups that have been hand-wound by Abigail Ybarra on each of these Limited Edition instruments. Abigail started working at Fender in 1956, and more likely than not, wound the pickups found in most late-'50s Fender Stratocaster guitars.From the Fendercustonshop.com website:YURIY SHISHKOVFrom handcrafting many of his own woodworking tools to showcasing his world-class luthier skills and custom inlay work, Yuriy Shishkov is truly one of the last of the renaissance guitar builders. It was in the small confines of a root cellar in his hometown of Gomel in the former Soviet Union that Shishkov got his start building guitars for friends and colleagues.When he arrived in the United States in 1990, Shishkov settled in the Chicago area and collaborated with a range of top artists, including late shredder Dimebag Darrell of Pantera, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, Nuno Bettencourt, Robin Zander of Cheap Trick and Paul Stanley of Kiss. Shishkov joined the Fender Custom Shop’s elite team of master builders in 2000. Thanks for looking . Billy 07989350264