The Fender® Custom Shop Yngwie Malmsteen Tribute Series Stratocaster®:

Play Loud!

Yngwie Malmsteen. The name alone strikes wonder into the hearts of guitarists everywhere. Malmsteen's classically inspired, fleet-fingered technique and apocalyptic guitar sound continue to mesmerize listeners today just as it did when the world first felt his Fender®-fueled fury in the early 1980s with his landmark 1984 solo debut, Rising Force.

Then as now, Malmsteen often worked his magic on an Olympic White 1971 Fender Stratocaster nicknamed the "Play Loud" guitar. He bought the guitar in Sweden in 1978 while still a teenager and performed the unusual and delicate modification of scalloping the fingerboard to help create his signature sound. The guitar has taken a beating over the years (and even a burning or two) as Malmsteen's main stage and studio guitar; played in countless concert appearances and used on each of his many solo albums.

Now, the Fender® Custom Shop introduces the new Yngwie Malmsteen Tribute Series Stratocaster® guitar, a meticulous reproduction of Malmsteen's beloved instrument, produced in limited edition. It is authentic in every detail, including the famous "Play Loud" sticker on the upper horn and, of course, the distinctive scalloped maple fingerboard. Like the original, it features DiMarzio® HS-3 pickups in the bridge and neck positions and a standard Fender '70s-era middle pickup, with a standard Fender bridge, a large headstock and a battered Olympic White finish expertly treated to mirror each of the original guitar's many battle scars-the nicks, dings, scratches, burns and worn finish spots from decades of heavy use and abuse in Malmsteen's masterful hands.

Yngwie is undoubtedly a rock star. No ordinary rock star, though. With his unique marriage of heavy rock and Paganini-esque classically inspired technique, Yngwie Malmsteen has been universally regarded for years as a truly innovative electric guitar virtuoso. Amazingly, he is a self-taught guitarist who transformed from a bright but unruly Swedish youth into a truly startling musician of astonishing talent.

By age 15, he came to prefer scalloped necks on his guitars after discovering the style on a 17-century lute that came to a guitar repair shop where he worked and in 1978, bought an Olympic White '71 Stratocaster from a drummer who had auditioned for his band.

The instrument quickly became Malmsteen's main guitar, and he wasted no time in modifying it to suit his taste. As was his preference, Malmsteen scalloped the fingerboard himself, and the Stratocaster eventually bore other flamboyant personal touches, including a "Play Loud" sticker on the upper horn that came to provide the guitar's nickname. As Malmsteen preferred with most of his Stratocaster guitars, the "Play Loud" was fitted with DiMarzio® HS-3 pickups in the bridge and neck positions, with the original Fender pickup in the middle position and the standard Fender bridge.

Malmsteen used his "Play Loud" Stratocaster to fuel his meteoric rise to guitar stardom and played it throughout his subsequent highly successful solo career. Famously, it is the "Play Loud" Stratocaster that appears on the cover of Malmsteen's landmark 1984 solo debut Rising Force, a sonic tour de force that practically introduced an entirely new classically-inflected guitar vocabulary. Rising Force became the bible for "neoclassical" rock, reached number 60 on Billboard's album chart, won Guitar Player magazine's best album award for the year and was nominated for a Grammy® award.

To this day, Yngwie Malmsteen is widely hailed as an innovative, influential and flamboyant master of the electric guitar in general and the Stratocaster in particular. Now as always, a Malmsteen performance simply must be seen to be believed, and Fender's new Tribute Series Yngwie Malmsteen "Play Loud" Stratocaster pays exquisitely crafted homage to the singular instrument of a monumentally talented artist and longtime friend.

ONLY AVAILABLE IN TWO STORES IN SCANDINAVIA SO FAR:

4SOUND STOCKHOLM
FOLKUNGAGATAN 54
STOCKHOLM, 116 22
ph: 0046 8-50595000

Aage Jensen KÖBENHAVN
ÅBENRÅ 3
KÖBENHAVN,
ph: 0045 33-142900

More info at: http://www.fender.com/yngwie