The Fender
Cumberland
River Floodwater
Lucite Esquire
BY REBECCA DIRKS
There are one-off guitars, and then there’s Luci. Built in fall 2010 by Fender’s R&D department, this
Lucite guitar—Luci for short—is unlike any Fender-produced instrument ever made. It was conceived for
NasH2O, a set of auctions to benefit Nashville musicians without resources and insurance who lost their
instruments in the spring 2010 flood, and was filled
with floodwater from Nashville’s Cumberland River.
The guitar is essentially an Esquire. And its simple
design—besides conjuring the images and tones associated with classic Nashville twang—allowed Fender’s
designers to craft channels so that the water flows
through the entire body when tilted.
Fender’s R&D team of Mike Bump, Scott Buehl,
and Josh Hurst designed and built the instrument using
CNC techniques to cut a block of Lucite with channels
for the electronics and water—not an easy task, as the
material is known to crack or melt if worked improperly.
The guitar was finished with a 1/4" thick slab Lucite
back with a special adhesive that essentially welded the
two halves together for a watertight seal. Once finished,
the guitar was filled with floodwater collected from a
pond on a farm that had been dry prior to the flood, and
retained the floodwater after the Cumberland receded.
Despite being filled with water, the guitar is fully
functional—though heavier than a standard guitar—and stocked with Fender’s ’50s reissue neck and
hardware. It features a ’50s reissue one-piece maple
neck with “skunk stripe” truss rod fill, 7. 25" fretboard
radius with vintage-style frets, vintage-style tuners,
vintage Tele bridge pickup with ’50s style cloth wiring,
vintage volume and tone setup with Greasebucket tone
circuit, a reverse control plate (a common Nashville
modification), and an ashtray bridge cover.
How rare is Luci? Just ask the designer. “We build
a Lucite guitar every once in a great while, but I don’t
recall seeing—or even hearing of—anything filled with
water,” said Bump. “And the fact that it is actual water
from the flood, well, I can say for certain nothing like
this has ever come out of Fender.”
Luci is up for auction at nash2o.com through
January 8, 2011.
A special thanks to Erica Erwin and photographer
Rusty Russell of NasH2O for providing photographs
and details on this unique instrument.
www.premierguitar.com
