Tom Wheeler: The Dream Factory Fender Custom Shop Book Review

By: Rick Landers

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For those who are Fender obsessed and love the contours, the feel and the sounds of Fender guitars, author Tom Wheeler’s latest book, The Dream Factory: Fender Custom Shop, offers up the comprehensive story of the now legendary Fender Custom Shop, complete with its compelling history, a vast series of stunning and informative illustrations and photos, highlights on some very cool CS axes, and the inside scoop on the genesis of the Custom Shop straight from some of the original custom builders.

Tom Wheeler is best known for being the past editor for Guitar Player magazine, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg of his experience in the world of guitars. He’s written for Rolling Stone, as well has interviewed such guitar legends as Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Les Paul. And with some notable envy, we know that he also interviewed Leo Fender and Ted McCarty.  His books include: American Guitars: An Illustrated History with a forward by Les Paul, as well, he has served as a consultant to the Smithsonian Institution. What some may not know is that Wheeler holds a Juris Doctorate degree and is currently a professor at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication.

So, Wheeler’s certainly got the credentials to pull together such a sweeping account of the Fender Custom Shop and in The Dream Factory, he does an absolutely superb job!

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The Dream Factory: Fender Custom Shop opens up with Acknowledgements by Wheeler that offers up thanks to well over one hundred friends and cohorts who contributed to the development of the book.  This is followed up by a Forward by one of the greatest guitarists of our time, Billy Gibbons, who highlights the Custom Shop’s development of “a great allegiance between companies and players.”  Not that it was something new to the company. Leo Fender worked closely with local guitarists in the development of the Broadcaster, the Esquire, and the Telecaster styled guitars and the Stratocaster back in the late ’40 and early ‘50s.  The Forward ends with a photo of the funky hip Bonecaster Esquire, created for Gibbons.

I’ll admit that getting through the book in any structured fashion is a challenge. Each page issues its own excitability and it takes some patience and strong discipline to not flip around frantically to try to soak it all in at once. Well, that’s an impossible dream and in some respects whether you’re a frantic page flipper or a reader who likes to take things step-by-step, your thirst will be quenched.  Wheeler knows how to write a fun and informative page turner, as well as a book for people who just need a quick Fender fix.  And it probably doesn’t hurt that Tom’s also a fine guitarist who knows his way around a fretboard and, thus, personally knows what kinds of Fender fuel ignite us.

Tom drew heavily on Fender’s original CS artisans and other notable Fender company insiders to pull together the Dream Factory’s story.  Michael Stevens, John Page, Mike Eldred, John English, George Blanda, Fred Stuart, John Cruz, George Amicay, Steve Boulanger, Yasuhiko Iwanade and more were asked for their insights and recollections of the beginnings of the Shop, or their own experiences later as developers, designers or builders.

The book has an amazing array of well over 500 photos that range from professionally posed images of Custom Shop guitars to candid and casual insider photos of the Shop, builders, and music legend clients. The Dream Factory book includes shots of such well-known axes as the CS version of the Clapton Strat, Danny Gatton’s Telecaster prototype that Danny had asked Tom Wheeler to sign, the factory’s Stevie Ray Vaughan Signature Series Strat, the prototype for the John Mayer Black 1 Strat, a shot of The Freddie Tavares Aloha Strat, the beautiful White Buffalo Miracle Tele, and the remarkable final photo of the Birdflower Telecaster with its full splash of inlay by Yuriy Shishkov.

Our review of The Dream Factory: Fender Custom Shop, began with the idea that you had to be “Fender obsessed” to be satisfied with this book, but that really doesn’t ring true. If you love guitars – any and all guitars – Tom Wheeler has done a herculean job by not only taking all of us on a tour of the Fender Custom Shop, but inviting us along on a full-blown Fender Custom Shop magic carpet ride.  Tom Wheeler’s The Dream Factory: Fender Custom Shop is a “must have” for all lovers of our favorite instrument and would be a nice surprise gift for any guitar enthusiast.