Fender Custom Shop 56 NOS & 56 'Hank Marvin' 22 fret neck Custom shop guitars review

Fender Custom Shop 56 NOS & 56 'Hank Marvin' 22 fret neck Custom shop guitars

Overview

We're looking at two Fender Custom Shop 56 Stratocasters today, both are NOS 'New Old Stock' finish and Fiesta Red coloured.

The top guitar in the picture is a 'Standard 56' for the purposes of this review, the lower one is a 'Hank Marvin' style stratocaster- a guitar based on the guitars built for Hank Marvin, lead guitarist with the Shadows, Cliff Richard and the Shadows and a solo artist in his own right in the 1990's by the Fender Custom shop.

The classic look of the 56 NOS Custom Shop Stratocaster in Fiesta Red

56 NOS Guitar

This example is a 2015 Team built guitar and is finished in Nitro cellulose Fiesta Red, in a more red shade than the usual more pinky tone, often referred to as 'Coral Red.'

The Neck is finished in a clear coat cellulose lacquer and the whole guitar feels very resonant.

The body is Alder, 3 piece and has vintage contouring. As this is a custom shop guitar, the body contours are cut more deeply than on many lesser priced models. The body is to the well known 'vintage' dimensions, routed for 3 single coil vintage pickups and for a 6 screw tremolo bridge. 

The one piece 21 fret vintage profile Birdseye 2AA Maple neck is nicely shaped, more of a D shape than a C and is quite full. The radius is 9.5" which is an improvement over the vintage radius and playing is easier with no note choking.

The neck is quite deep, which may be an issue for some with smaller fingers or used to the later C shape neck, which I tend to prefer. The frets are quite chunky and not the 'vintage wire' type which some may wish to change.

Hardware is Gold plated Fender with Fender stamped Kluson design machine heads at the headstock, butterfly wing string post for the E and B strings (which could be a round type if strictly a 56 replica), gold screws and vintage 6 stamped saddle 6 screw tremolo bridge.

Electric hardware is old style push back cloth covered wiring, full size 250k potentiometers and a 3 way pickup switch. This is a real step backwards, a complete waste of time as most players will change to an Oak 5 way at the earliest time. As they have changed the neck radius then why not logically, install the 5 way switch at the time of build? 

About the first thing anyone is going to do is to replace the archaic 3 way switch! -

like I'm doing in this photo. Fender Custom Shop - please take note -

don't waste time buying and fitting a 3 way switch here. Fit a 5 way, from the outset!

Pickups are the new Custom Shop 54's and they sound very nice, when you fit the 5 way and can slot into the in between sounds, they really sound nice for those 'Mid position' tones, which it is more difficult to get by 'balancing' a 3 way switch 'out of phase'. 

The scratch plate is the 50's single ply white type in brilliant white, the other plastic parts such as pickup covers, back plate, trem tip and pot knobs are also in 'new' white and not the 'aged' white. So essentially, the guitar looks like you just unpacked it.

Many who buy the 56 NOS in Fiesta Red are trying to have a guitar like the one that British guitarist Hank Marvin first used in 1959, bought for him by bandleader Cliff Richard. Although this guitar has a C shape neck.

56 NOS 'Hank Marvin' 22 fret neck NOS Stratocaster in Fiesta Red

The 56 NOS 'Hank Marvin' 22 fret Custom Shop Stratocaster

Overview

The 22 fret guitar came about as a result of British guitarist Hank Marvin's signature model Stratocasters. The first ones made in the 1990s with Lace pickups Hank wasn't that happy with, lower priced signature models were the Squier Japan and Fender Japan 'vintage reissue' guitars, the Squier having a c shape neck and the Japan Fender a completely incorrect V shape neck.

Both these signature models were limited run of 500 pieces and are collectible in their own right these days. A short run of 250 Mexican made signature guitars had the correct C shape neck.

A custom shop run of 54 '1959' replications of Hank Marvin's original Stratocaster was made for Oasis Music of Ringwood, Hampshire, these featured the 1958 C shape neck.

When Hank Marvin embarked on solo tours with his backing band in the 1990s, Fender again became involved in building him a signature guitar. By this time, Hank was in contact with Chris Kinman who was building his Kinman pickups, initially for Stratocaster guitars.

Hank became an endorsee of the pickups for a few years and had them installed on his new custom shop guitars with a Di-Marzio pickup in the bridge position.

Hank was seen in photographs sporting his 'new' Stratocaster, these were almost an 'upgrade' to the vintage pre-CBS (1958) guitar he had been using in the later Shadows up until 1990. The 'new' 90's guitar had a vintage single coil routed body, Birdseye Maple neck, Truss rod adjuster at the Nut end, Sperzl locking machines and Kinman pickups fitted. The 12th fret dots on the fretboard were also closer together in the '1963 spacing' style.

Hank had sets of 'Vintage' and 'Modern' Kinmans in his Custom Shop guitars, so he could use them on either modern or old Shadows tunes accordingly. Hank incorporated the 'Easi-Mute' tremolo arm designed and made in the UK which allowed easier palm muting of notes. More recently Hank has reverted to Fender pickups of the 50's variety.

Comparison of headstocks of the 56 NOS (top) and the 56 NOS 'Hank Marvin' (below)

The Fender Custom Shop 56 NOS 'Hank Marvin' Stratocaster in Fiesta Red

Our example here is a team built 2007 year made guitar. Essentially a replication of Hank's late 1990's Custom Shop guitars. These are not officially called the 56 NOS 'Hank Marvin' but the buying specification was all but that in name!

The build came about as players wanted to own a guitar like Hank's contemporary guitar from the 1990s, so a couple of UK music shops put in a specification to the Fender Custom Shop to make replicas of Hank's then current guitar.

The body is a 5 piece lay up of Alder with single coil routing and vintage contouring. Now you may think that 2 or 3 piece bodies are preferable, but the woods here are so good in tonal quality and density that they work as well as the 3 piece on the other 56.

Some years on and the cellulose has started to sink around the joints of the wood blocks, but this is normal for cellulose.

The neck is a 22 fret one piece 2AA birdseye maple, with a slight 'overhang' onto the scratch plate for the 22nd fret. The profile is a 'soft V' shape but is more like a slightly fatter 'C' shape, it is easy to play and not too wide or deep. The truss rod adjustment is at the head end and the wood in this area where the peg head starts is thicker than on a vintage 50's type neck. This does not affect playability as it is beyond the playing area. The neck also has the '1963' closer spacing for the twin dots on the fretboard at the 12th fret.

This guitar was purchased secondhand with 11-56 Elixr strings on, the neck was quite bowed and a set of 9-42 interim D'Addario 9-42's was fitted and the truss rod adjusted, as bought the guitar was barely playable. It has now been set up and is about as slick standard of my other guitars. 

The finish is Fiesta Red nitrocelluslose with a slight honey tinted neck.  

Hardware is Gold plated Fender standard fare with Gold Sperzl locking machine heads as standard. Essentially as used on Hank's guitars.

Originally the guitars were fitted with Fender's Noiseless single coil pickups as Fender allegedly would not install the 'non-Fender' Kinman pickups in the guitars, so the pickups were changed in the UK to Kinmans before sale. Although Fender installed Humbuckers in some of their guitars, it is curious why Fender did not install the 'correct' pickups for the specification?   

This specification guitar was of quite limited in production, about 12 being produced per year for a limited amount of UK retail outlets. Thus, they are rarer than the 'standard' 56 NOS standard guitars.

With a choice of Modern, Vintage or Future Vintage 'Gipsy Jazz' Kinman pickup options, all variants used by Hank Marvin, the pickup sounds to replicate Hank's material whether old or new was there. 

This guitar has the Future Vintage hotter pickups with a 64 in the bridge and 63's in the neck and middle pickup positions. A standard 5 way oak type switch is fitted, the wires are the solderless push together harness option from Chris Kinman, along with a Kinman K-9 harness which features a push button pot on the lower tone pot and the middle pot also acts as a variable position pickup selector switch, allowing one to get the mellow 'Gypsy Jazz' sound on one setting, if desired.

Side by side comparison

These 56 NOS are really  'a tale of two Stratocasters,' similar but different, the 56 'as was' type of build to the 56 'evolved' type of build. The sound of each variant is different due to the electronics, the 54 pickups give a nice vintage tone and are not 'crashy' sounding as some pickups were from the pre-CBS era.

The Kinmans give a real 'Hank' sound. Both sets are clear for both rhythm playing or single note work. Its a choice of what sound you're after.

Playing wise, the 'Marvin'  'evolved' model is easier to play due to the neck shape. Side by side for the money, even if I wasn't looking for the Hank Marvin sound, I'd choose that one for the easier playing neck and the 5 way switch fitted from 'new.'

Finding the 'Marvin' type of 56 NOS is not that easy these days, so if you do find one, don't delay if you really want it! The 'stock 56' is not a lost cause neckwise, there are people who will reduce the wood on the back to make it easier to play if that is an issue. 

Youfilm - has the Internet killed film and music as a career choice?

'Flying Squad'  a Tin Hat films production -

a retro film similar to the Sweeney series of the 70's -

in my opinion, this 'youfilms' approach is the future.

Then there was YouTube

YouTube is a great resource for old videos of things gone by, but at what cost is the Internet killing off future talent?

I can remember in the 1980's when I was in a pub band with some friends I was at school with, that all we needed was to go to a pub where an A&R man from a record company was likely to go and see if we could get lucky and get signed. 

Much the same had been the case since the late 1950's when luminaries like Tommy Steele, Cliff Richard and Marty Wilde had been talent spotted.

I remember going to music shops and seeing someone trotting out a note perfect rendition of something on a guitar and likely that was all they were good for, the music shop player I called them.

Fast forward about 30 years and we got television shows like the X factor and the like. It hasn't surprised me to see that some of the performers have been outed as semi professionals or even professionals who are looking to make it bigger. Not the amateur performer who does it and thinks they might have a chance.

Going on youtube you can see countless people copying note for note music performances, but then you don't get the same amount of original material.

The music industry took a real hit when applications such as ITunes and Spotify started up, bands could circumvent the old A&R circuit and get 'discovered' on the Internet and then sign a contract when they had an established audience and greater pull. And get a better deal in the round.

The advent of the digital music download has hit the big companies who sold CDs, DVDs and the media packaging cases too. But, the trend for 'Big Noting' your CD and DVD collection by having it on show in your front room, has meant an upsurge in physical media unit sales.

The future of film

So how will films fare in the future? You can find any number of films on youtube and under a 'fair use' policy, it seems getting around copyright issues?

Films today are big business and big money. The cost has always been there, but is there not now a trend for the 'art house' film making its presence felt?

About twenty years ago, I was involved with a group of 1940's scene enthusiasts and we made a short video on a preserved steam railway, they later wanted to do a film set in the winter of 1944, but there were changes in the group membership, so it never got much further.

Recently I came across a company called Tin Hat films, who were making self financed small films. I saw their 'Flying Squad' film, a sort of version of the Sweeney for want of a better description.

It was impressive, they had the 'right' cars, the right sets and proved that a small independent unit of enthusiasts could turn out a quality, professional film for little finance. The problem is how to get the investment back. Would 'the industry' support these people or see them as some sort of 'black leg labour' taking away jobs from the 'established' arena?

With an episode of something like 'Morse' or 'Lewis' likely to cost a million pounds an episode to make, quality productions clearly cost, but only the large television networks have the pockets deep enough for them. True, these get sold around the world, but is there not also a place for the smaller players?

This 'youfilm' type of product is not new, but in my view, it is the way forward - that is a gathering of people with the resources and talent to come together and create good films. Essentially a script, players, film, locations, props is the recipe to start with. 

Having written books for stage and film adaption, planning is also a big and important part of the project. 

With many actors out there already, is there the room for these independent productions? Indeed, Euston films that filmed the Sweeney was such a company and that was over 40 years back. 

My parents both worked for the BBC in the heyday of the organisation and I have been out on location to see the creative process taking place. The difference is the money. 

The small, 'youfilm' units need some money, but by a collective process and gathering, they can and do achieve results as good as some mainstream broadcast providers.

The question remains - in the 'youfilm' future, how do these smaller players fit in and can they make sufficient living from it?

I think they can. 

In the next 12 years one in three jobs is likely to be lost to automation, this is going to leave some people without livelihoods. This is where a Basic Income Guarantee payment will have to come in and will start a new 'cottage industry' situation - films will be a part of that.

The BBC as a publicly funded broadcaster is an anachronism now, in a world where there are countless commercial channels.

The BBC model will have to be rethought, it is a poll tax on viewing and should commercialise as much as possible to compete.

I thought twenty years ago that demand viewing would be the future, this has now come to pass.

Star Treknology - reaching the final frontier

Star Trek 'Treknology' - 50 years on,

most of it is now Science Fact - not Science Fiction.

Transport of delight

Some of the technology from the Star Trek original series has come to be commonplace today, yet one area seems to have eluded science - that of transportation.

But is science going about it the right way?

The 'dematerialistion' to the atomic level and 'rematerialisation' in to the solid, is maybe not the way forward.

Maybe the way forward is to take the whole entity from one place to the next in one piece.

This does involve knowing about where your target location is and the environment there. It seems to be the way to go, rather than the assemblage route. 

In short, we need to know more about the universe and to develop the technology of future travel.

Is HMRC next to be under attack from the Robots?

Computing 1950's style - when LEO roared

1 in 3 of the world's jobs set to disappear to automation in the next 12 years.

Is HMRC just another large organisation that sees the benefit of automation as a cost cutting and efficiency improving situation?

The 1950's spawned the first commercial venture into electronic computing, built on the secret WW2 work done at Bletchley Park and the pre-war GPO research at Dollis Hill around 1938 under Tommy Flowers and his colleagues, which in turn fuelled the Bletchley technologies under Alan Turing.

Although Bletchley Park's work was secret and not known about until the 1970's, the technology obviously was.

In America ENIAC was one of the first computers developed out of the wartime experience and companies like Westinghouse would be at the forefront there in developing this technology for business and military usage.

Back in Britain, Lyons Tea was bizarrely you may think, one of the first British companies to develop a computer for business use, called LEO.

LEO - The 'Lyons Electronic Office', was set up to micro manage all aspects of the business transaction - from soup to nuts or tea to cake if you like.

In the early 1950's, an 'outsourcing' experiment was conducted at Lyons by the Social Security department. They had the social security contributions data for all citizens that paid in, run for the next year as an exercise.

The LEO computer performed the millions of calculations faultlessly in less than a weekend. The same job done manually by hand, would have taken months. 

Just after WW2, the great cybernetician Norbert Wiener predicted the mass loss of jobs to computing and he was right.

A Taxing business

So, it is no surprise to hear that HMRC is looking to computerise much of its operations in tax analysis and collecting. This is a sensible move for two reasons, accuracy and volume.

The machine can apply many rules and if the programming is correct, then the results are accurate. Thus the machine can do the massive calculation work which computers are suited to and get it right.

We are moving towards a cashless society, the trend is towards card payments and cash has its place, but cash is certainly amongst younger people almost unused as the advent of contactless cards is here. We see high street banks closing as leases come up and efficiencies made and money deposited in hard cash falls.

For HMRC, this automation should free up 'real people' to talk to when you think things have gone wrong. It isn't necessarily going to be leading to mass loss of employment, with skill full handling and managed natural wastage along with early retirement packages, the transition could be made smoothly.

However, with 1 in 3 of the world's jobs going to computers in the next 12 years, will automation be used as another cost cutting measure? Or for HMRC, could it be intelligently used to restructure the organisation to make it fitter for the future?

Bitcoin here, Bitcoin there

The rise in technology bringing in the cashless society is also bringing in the rise of cyber currencies. Paypal was almost the model for this - a virtual bank on-line, but, criminals have got to see Paypal as a model for another banking operation, as they move into off-grid currencies and monetary transactions as Paypal scrutinises the data more.

Thus Bitcoin for all its independent from the mainstream attraction, now has become one of the new underground farms.

Bitcoin, started for altruistic reasons and as an alternative, has been added to the criminal's armoury for money acquisition and revenue detection and avoidance.

The bottom line is just that - and automation is one factor that cuts costs. And does.