Cheryl | soldguitars

(SOLD)

1989 Fernandez FR-65 (FujiGen)

"Cheryl"

Fernandes was a curious company. Back in the late 80's, they were best known (renowned?) for making high quality copies of well known guitars, like the Strat, Tele and Les Paul. They occupied a similar market to Tokai in that respect. Their guitars were well respected, with lots of seasoned players actually preferring their Fernandes and Tokai over the real thing. Fender introduced their own Japanese gear to fight back, and those early Jap Squier guitars are now highly sought after. The REASON that the Fernandes and Tokai copies caused a bit of a stir was that they were made IMMACULATELY by the folks at the Fuji-Gen Gakki factory in Japan. If you've been paying attention, you'll know that I rate that factory VERY highly; that is where the top end Ibanez Prestige and Team-J-Craft guitars are made, as well as the Vai Signature JEM and Universe guitars. So they know their stuff. Once Fernandez made a name for themselves, they quickly released a range of guitars that WEREN'T copies, including this handsome beast, the FR-65. As far as I'm aware, Tokai never took that next step to make their own designs, which is a shame.

Back in '89, I bought a reference book called "What Guitar", which I STILL refer to sometimes, but which I read to death, over and over. It contained a list of the 60 most popular guitars on sale, with a description of each. At the start of the list was some very nasty £60 plywood bodied nightmares (anyone else remember the Marlin Sidewinder?!). At the END of the list, nestling next to the Gibson Les Paul and the £2,000 PRS Custom (a LOT of money in '89!) was a Fernandes FR ... so these have always fascinated me. Fast forward to 2015 and I'd pretty much forgotten about these things, until I got a mail from an internet buddy asking if I'd seen "It" on eBay. Seen what? I'd no idea what he was on about, until he sent me a link. And there it was. An ACTUAL Fernandes FR. An embarrassingly low starting bid, and no offers. I did what I routinely do, and threw in a single bid (for three times the low-ball starting bid, just in case some other smart-arse was planning a sniper-bid) a few seconds before the end. No other bids! What the hell is the world coming to? An immaculate FugiGen guitar for the price of a big trolley of groceries?

Whatever, this is very nicely made, with a "soft maple" body (which IS proper maple, but which is ... well ... softer than other maple I suppose!) and a chubby maple neck and a rosewood board, with 24 nicely finished jumbo frets. The neck is a proper handful, is very comfortable, and plays very well, as you'd expect from a FujiGen. Hardware is all by Gotoh, including the "Head-Crasher" Floyd. Being a Gotoh unit, the Floyd is very solidly made, and even after 25 years, shows no signs of wear. It certainly holds tune very well. I was interested that the "What Guitar" review described the Head-Crasher as "irritatingly fiddly", but it turns out that it is an entirely regular licensed Floyd ... back in those days of course the Floyd was pretty novel, so maybe the reviewer just wasn't familiar with Floyds ... there's certainly nothing irritating about it. I was also interested to see that the Floyd (although not technically an OFR) isn't stamped anywhere with the usual "Licensed under Floyd Rose Patents", which non-original Floyds have to be, otherwise Floyd sues their ass. I understand that Fernandes and Floyd Rose had a very cozy deal back in the days before Floyd and Kramer started working together. It turns out that, back then, Fernandes were actually mass producing the original Floyds for Floyd Rose. Presumably via Gotoh?

Pickups are Fernandes' own but suit the guitar very well ... the bridge hum is quite neutral, and the neck single is really pretty powerful, so the output of the two match well. To control stuff, there's a three-way blade and a mini-toggle which I THOUGHT was a coil split, cutting one of the coils on the bridge pup. With that "coil split" on and both pups selected, the tone is very pleasing, but is entirely devoid of the "quack" that you might expect from a pair of single coils. It's also a very powerful tone. Which got me thinking. After a little detective work with my multimeter, it turns out that the coil split switch is no such thing ... I pulled the cavity covers off to see the innards (all very tidy) and it looks like the switch is a very early version of the "blower switch" used by Suhr and Tom Anderson ... set the controls however you like and, when activated, the switch automatically takes you to the bridge pup with the volume control bypassed for your "foot-on-the-monitor" solo moments. I wonder whether this was the Genesis of the modern blower switch?

Anyway, this is a great guitar, and was worth every second of my 25 year wait ...