Fender Custom Shop Rory Gallagher Stratocaster Masterbuilt Dale Wilson - heavy relic 3-color sunburst

Fender Custom Shop designers met Donal Gallagher, brother of late great guitarist Rory Gallagher, in Los Angeles in 1997 and received one of the most coveted guitars of all time - Gallagher's heavily worn 1961 Stratocaster® guitar. Fender initially built 40 replicas for European sale, but was subsequently besieged with requests for more.

The FENDER Custom Shop Masterbuilt MBDW Rory Gallagher Tribute Stratocaster Heavy Relic 3-Color Sunburst (9213000475) solid body electric guitar is an exact replica of that revered instrument, down to the extremely worn Three-color Sunburst alder body, maple neck and rosewood fingerboard. It even has five Sperzel® tuners and one Gotoh® tuner, and the 12th-fret dot marker is white plastic rather than the original clay. It also features three custom-wound '60s single-coil pickups, aged chrome hardware, 21 medium jumbo frets and a synthetic bone nut. Fender's homage to a true and truly missed master.

Dale Wilson arrived at Fender in 2003, joined the Custom Shop in 2005 and became a Master Builder in 2011. Building guitars has been a driving passion for the California native since childhood.
He did repair work and mods in a small guitar shop right out of high school in the late 1980s; subsequently moving on to stints at Dobro and Rickenbacker before arriving at Fender, where he worked on Guild, Gretsch and Benedetto guitars before beginning his apprenticeship with various Custom Shop Master Builders.
He enjoys calling upon his extensive and varied experience as a craftsman to create highly distinctive guitars such as the Resophonic Thinline Telecaster®. Wilson also built five beautiful custom guitars for the January 2011 NAMM Show while still an apprentice and was asked to sign the back of the headstocks, garnering him his Master Builder status