In the history of rock ‘n roll, there are many famous and recognizable guitars. But none may be more iconic than Eric Clapton’s heavily used and photographed guitar, “Blackie”.
For those of you unaware of the prominence of this guitar (or are maybe on the younger side of the audience), “Blackie” was Eric Clapton’s primary guitar throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s. This guitar was used by Clapton to record and perform some of the most famous songs in history including “I Shot the Sheriff”, “Lay Down Sally”, and even “Wonderful Tonight”.
Blackie was Eric’s primary touring guitar, and he famously played it for his 3-song set in front of 100k+ people at the Live Aid concert in 1985.
Blackie was certainly in the spotlight for many years during the late 70’s to mid 80’s. But why was Blackie so special to Clapton? Well, the story behind Blackie gives us a little more information as to why it was Clapton’s preferred instrument.
So, What is “Blackie”?
For a long time, Slowhand favored Gibson guitars. However, in 1970, Clapton decided to move to Stratocasters due mainly to influences from Jimi Hendrix and Steve Winwood. As a result of these influences, Clapton ventured out to the Sho-Bud guitar shop in Nashville, TN to find a new axe. As the story goes, Eric bought 6 Fender Stats on that trip dated from the 1950’s-1970 for $200-$300 each. Being the generous friend that he was, he gave three of these guitars away to his buddies George Harrison, Steve Winwood, and Pete Townshend. (Total speculation here, but I’m guessing Pete probably smashed his…)
In any case, Clapton had 3 different colored Strats left – one from 1956, one from 1957, and one from 1970. For some time he played all 3 guitars independently. But Clapton liked the idea of having a black one best. And while the body of the black one was in good shape, he preferred the neck from one of the other ones, and a combination of pickups and parts from all three. So he brought them back to Nashville and commissioned luthier Ted Newman Jones to assemble “Blackie” from the best parts of those remaining guitars.
In 2004, Clapton told this story first-had to Christie’s Auction house:
“I kept two or three for myself and built this (Blackie) out of those. With pickups from one, scratchplate from another and the neck from another. It is such a personal thing–I almost made this guitar myself–from different components, and I’ve never done that before or since.”
-Eric Clapton
Let’s get back to “Blackie”.
According to an article on Fender.com, the black body of of Blackie is alder and from a 1956 Strat. The neck is hard-V shaped, one-piece maple neck from 1957. It’s said that two of the pickups are original to the ’56 Strat, while one is from the 1970 Strat. Over the years there were repairs and modifications performed on Slowhand’s main squeeze, including a blocked vibrato and the addition of a 5-way pickup selector.
Now that we know what Blackie is, let’s build a guitar!
How to build “Blackie”
The original Blackie was sold back in 2004 through a Christie’s Auction to the Guitar Center for $959,500. That’s a pretty steep price for most of us, so for this third installment of “Build an Iconic Guitar”, let’s see if we can build a replica for less than that…
First and foremost, it’s worth noting that Fender already produces reproductions of Blackie in their signature line of guitars. These reproductions are still readily available on Amazon for about $2,000.
Furthermore, if money is no object and you want something that is as close to the real thing as possible, Fender produced a line of Masterbuilt Blackies back in 2006. Every once in a while, these pop up for sale – usually in the $20-30k range. These we meticulously crafted by hand by the best guitar builders at Fender. The reproduced the wear on the guitar down to the cigarette burns on the headstock. Pretty cool if you ask me. However, these are out of most of our price ranges.
To build this guitar, we could go a couple of different routes. I previously wrote that in my opinion, the best budget guitar to modify is the Squire SE Strat. This Strat would serve as a great starting point for your Blackie clone. However, the body of this one is made from basswood. It’s a decent wood, but won’t give you the same tone as alder. So, instead let’s try to source the different components individually.
The Body
As it is mentioned above, the body of the 1956 Stratocaster than Eric Clapton used to build Blackie was Alder – a popular wood used in Strats at that time due to its balanced tonal qualities. Alder Stratocaster bodies are readily available on eBay and you can usually find one in the $150-300 range for an official Fender licensed part.
If you do go the eBay route, be careful. Sellers may not know what wood the body is. And as a result, may post a basswood Squier body labeled as Alder.
For the sake of this hypothetical build, let’s choose this one for $250
The Neck
Eric Clapton was clearly a picky player. Which is why he chose to assemble Blackie from the parts of various guitars – specifically the ones that he enjoyed playing. Now, the official Fender Eric Clapton signature Blackie Stratocaster specs list the neck as a soft-V:
However, Fender notes in their story about Blackie that the neck from that ’57 Strat was a hard-V. So, what’s the difference? Here’s a handy chart that shows how those two neck profiles differ:
As you can see, the hard-V is clearly different from the soft-V on the replacement. There is likely a reason for this. My best guess is that modern players simply prefer the soft-V.
Additionally, it is incredibly hard to find a hard-V neck nowadays. Connecting the dots here, my gut tells me that because the demand for hard-V necks has dropped significantly since the mid-50s, Fender and other guitar builders simply stopped making them.
So unfortunately, we’ll have to make this guitar with similar, but not the same specs as Clapton’s original Frankenstrat.
On a positive note, the soft-V profile neck is widely available. So for our build, let’s use a similar neck that Fender uses in its replicas. It features a “vintage 50s soft-V profile” and the same 9.5″ neck radius as on the Blackie replica spec. You can find it on Amazon for $299.
The Pickups
Here’s where the build gets tricky.
As you recall from the story above, Clapton’s original Blackie had three pickups from two different guitars – 2 from a 1956 Strat and 1 from a 1970 Strat. It’s unclear which specific pickup position was from 1970. However, when the original Blackie was on display at The Met, the description indicated that the pickups were all from the mid-50s. So, a lot of conflicting information out there on these.
That said, we could go a couple of ways on getting our pickups for our build.
The first way is to use the same pickups that Fender installs in its reproduction models. Based on the specs, they use Fender Vintage Noiseless pickups. You can grab a set of these from Amazon for $229. Bonus if you go this route is that the set comes with 3 pots, a capacitor, and a resistor to wire them up.
Personally, I really like the Fender Pure Vintage line of pickups. I used a set of these (’64) in my telecaster build several years ago and couldn’t be happier.
You can find Pure Vintage ’57 Stratocaster pickups on Amazon or eBay for around $200.
The final route you could go here is to find truly authentic pickups from 1956 and 1970 on Reverb.com. These don’t come up very frequently, but setting an alert for them will help you out.
The Rest of the Parts
Ok, now that we have the most important parts in hand, let’s get to the rest of the hardware.
Tuning Pegs
The tuning pegs on Clapton’s Blackie appear to be stock vintage Fender covered tuning machines. You can easily find these on Amazon for $35.
Bridge and Tremolo
Blackie’s bridge and tremolo were just the standard issue American Fender parts that came from the factory. One small exception here is that Clapton didn’t ever use the vibrato system, so he had his guitar tech block the tremolo. All that means is that they installed a wood block between the trem block and the body to prevent it from moving.
Personally, I would rather just tighten the springs and still have that potential functionality. But I’m also not one of the best guitarists to ever walk the planet, so maybe he knows better than I…
In any case, you can pick up a vintage Strat bridge system on Amazon for $70. Whether or not you choose to block it is up to you.
Pro tip: make sure you measure the space for the bridge on your body BEFORE you buy a bridge system. There is typically a vintage size and a modern size and you’ll need to get the correct one.
Controls
I used to really hate soldering. But after years of practice on guitars, I still hate it, just not as much.
That said, if you’re like me and want to do a few solders as possible, getting a prewired Stratocaster control system might be the way to go.
However, for this build, let’s do some work and get as close to the vintage sound as we can with modern pots. Love them or hate them, StewMac makes some great guitar parts and tools. And this Golden Age Premium Wiring Kit will replicate what is on a vintage Fender Stratocaster. Only $65 on Amazon.
Scratch Plate, Strap Buttons, and Jack Plate
These are commodity parts that you can easily find on Amazon.
For mid-50’s Stratocasters, Fender used a premium celluloid material. Fender’s Pure Vintage line still produces pickguards in the same fashion and with the same vendors that they had in that era. You can get them on Amazon for $25.
Grab yourself a set of Fender American Standard Series strap buttons for this build for $5.
Last here is the jack plate. No real need to go with a brand name here, grab this one on Amazon for $5.
The Final Build Cost
Building guitars is a labor of love, but it can also be cost effective when trying to get the instrument of your dreams. As you recall at the top of this post, you could buy the off-the-line Fender reissue Blackie for $2,150.
But you are smarter than that.
Based on all the components that I outlined in this post, here is what you’ll end up spending making your very own personal “Blackie”:
- Body: $250 on eBay
- Neck: $300 on Amazon
- Pickups: $200 on Amazon
- Tuning Pegs: $35 on Amazon
- Bridge/Tremolo: $70 on Amazon
- Controls: $65 on Amazon
- Pickguard: $25 on Amazon
- Strap Buttons: $5 on Amazon
- Jack Plate: $5 on Amazon
So by essentially using all Fender brand parts, you were able to create your Blackie for only $955!!
That’s a savings of $1,195 had you gone with the Fender reissue!
Sometimes it really pays to be handy.
Good luck and happy building!
