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The Legendarily Bizarre 1976 Fender Catalog

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#1 ·
Been a big fan of Fender's incredibly bizarre mythology themed 1976 catalog for a long time. Never seen high res scans, but a sci-fi artwork site recently uploaded them. It's an ultra-cool bit of obscura because not only is it batshit insane, Fender themselves commissioned the art, thought this was a good idea.

So in case anyone else is into the "inhumanly hot licks", here they are.







Feel free to guess the amount of drugs this took to make, or ponder why guitar catalogs have stopped featuring hookah smoking catepillars or wonder if the fact the Starcaster never made it as a model is due to the bizarre fantasy roll out.
 
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#11 ·
I was so into Yes in '76 I basically didn't listen to anything else, and these pics remind me a lot of the Yes album covers of the time. Very Roger Dean and cheap Mexican brown weed inspired :)





 
#12 ·
Relayer is my favorite Yes album, and yes, that Dean cover is awesome. The snake isn't actually part of the cover, it's just the nights on the ice bridge, you only get the full thing with it laid out as a gatefold. The last four-six minutes of the main cut on that album that got released as a single is one of my favorite songs of all time.



Also obviously a huge fan of all of Hawkwind's album covers from that era.
 
#15 ·
I believe Steve mostly played a modded late 50's whiteguard Tele, but with a PAF added in the neck slot and the Telecaster Deluxe 'Les Paul' type 3 way switch in the upper bout added. The regular Deluxe had 2 hums but Steve almost always had the single in the bridge no matter the Tele. I mean, he may own 50 Teles so its splitting hairs anyway...

I was never a huge fan of "Soon" as a single edit, but I can see why they did it. One of my favorite parts of "Gates" is in the 'War' section, where Jon and Alan White are banging on hubcaps they bought on the way to the studio to make the 'War' sound more realistic :)

 
#18 ·
I know he played that 50's Tele on The Ladder, but how much I have no idea. Relayer was the Tele, TRSOG from Tales was 345 and the rest of that album was a Les Paul Junior, and as you note the GFTO album was almost all Strat except for the pedal steel. He always sounds like him though. The beginning of Asia's Heat Of The Moment, that 5 chord intro, is 5 different guitars, one chord each lol
 
#20 ·
Well, I dig that Caster. Fender should [re]issue it - as the multiscaled Seventhcaster FF.

I wonder who modeled for Alice.. ;)
And, of all the understood symbology, I still miss why the book is open on a page with capital D..
 
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