Since 1987, the Fender Custom Shop has been a "dream factory," producing guitars that are to playing what Ferraris are to driving. The skilled craftsmen in Fender's Corona, Calif., Custom Shop are known worldwide for their artistry in making guitars that range from the fine to the fantastic. Whether it's building a new custom instrument from the ground up or modifying an existing one, their best is the best. Fender's finest is the world's finest.

Fender Custom Shop instruments have been crafted for and with the input of the world's finest players—names like Clapton, Beck, Burton, Cray, Gilmour, Townshend and Vaughan, to name just a few. One could be yours.

"You can have your guitar built at the same factory where Eric Clapton's guitar is built, by the same people," said Mike Eldred, Custom Shop Director of Sales and Marketing. "Nobody else does what they do."

The Fender Custom Shop's people are hand-selected, uniquely trained individuals with unparalleled excellence and experience in the company's main production lines and some of the world's most prestigious instrument shops. Each builder is trained and then trained again, and each one is constantly learning new techniques, be it hand selection of aged Brazilian rosewood or a different way to fret-dress a fingerboard. Every person in the Custom Shop is a valuable asset who imparts the "Fender family" feel to every single instrument we produce.

And it truly is a family—some members of which have been with Fender since the '50s and '60s. Herbie Gastelum, Abigail Ybarra and others are truly experts on how it was done in the beginning because they were there at the beginning, and their continuing presence and fantastic institutional memory serve as a window through which we can experience and preserve Fender's rich history and heritage.

Since its inception in 1987, the Fender Custom Shop has been a testing ground, R&D facility, artist model producer, prototype shop and premier "dream factory." Indeed, some of the guitars that appear in today's regular production lines were once available only from the Custom Shop, a concept that can be traced to former Fender CEO William "Bill" Schultz that still echoes today.