FENDER
STAND #84-87. GROUND LEVEL
#A20-A21. LEVEL ONE
Well it just wouldn’t be a guitar show without the Fender brand would it? For fans of the legendary guitar icon, this year there will be more Fender guitars at the Melbourne Guitar Show than ever before as they have expanded their stand space and will be trucking in a lot more gear. They will even preview a couple of new Fender electric guitar models which haven’t even been released yet, so attendees will get to see those first hand.
Fender’s Graeme Walsh is excited about Fender’s presence at this year’s Melbourne Guitar Show.
“In the past it has always been a great experience for us, ” he says of the Melbourne Guitar Show. “We’ve been really excited with the amount of people that come to the show who love to pick up the guitars. We always encourage people to pick up any guitar they want to play. We have about 30 amplifiers on stand this year including limited edition models. We’re really excited to be able offer a much, much bigger array of guitars than we have in the past.”
This year Fender will occupy stands 84-87 downstairs on the electric floor and upstairs on stands A20-A21in the acoustic area. “The electric floor space is bigger than what we have ever done before,” Graeme tells me. “We are going to have fairly broad representative range of products on there. We’ll have at least a dozen custom shop guitars there. We’ve got American Professionals, American Elites. We have a really big range of Signature Series models .. artists signature models such as the Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, Yngwie Malmsteen, guitars that you don’t always see in shops. We’ll have the Brad Paisley Tele. We are also bring down some samples of a couple of guitars which haven’t actually been released yet; a new Jimi Hendrix Monterey Strat and the Ed O’Brien (Radiohead) Sustainer Strat. These are guitars which will be released at the back half of this year and we have one sample of each. Some people may have seen them at Summer NAMM in Nashville but apart from that, nobody has seen them before, so a little bit of a Melbourne Guitar Show exclusive. We will also have plenty of Mexican Strats and Teles and a range of Squiers, plus a bass area as well. ”
Upstairs you can see, try and buy range of Fender acoustic including the Paramount series, which was so well received at Winter NAMM earlier this year, the Classic Design series and a selection of T-Buckets and California Sonorans. They’ll also have some Gretsch Roots Series instruments upstairs including Gretsch ukuleles and resonators, plus Gretsch acoustic guitars.
Like many of the stands, Fender will feature on-stand performances by both upcoming and established musicians, amplified by Fender’s new Fighter Series PA system. Check in with the stand on the show weekend for performance details.
“We also have the new Fender in-ear monitors and you can try those,” continues Graeme, rattling off an endless list of Fender products which will be on stand this year. “Plus we have some new bluetooth speakers, little music playing devices that we have just released and T-shirts, caps, bookends bar stools … all those bits and pieces too and lots of stickers to give out.”
Visit the Fender booths over the weekend and you can see performances by Paul Dempsey, Ali Barter, Oscar Dawson (Holy Holy), Strangers, and Phil Manning. Sounds like the folks at Fender have got guitar show fever. Their Melbourne Guitar Show booths will be an absolute must see for anyone heading to Caulfield Racecourse on the weekend.