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That is quite a collection, Rob. They must be the guitars in your profile photo.

Andy

Andy,

Yes the strats on my avatar are 6 of 7 f red strats, you can see a '62 P Bass at the far right.
Not on the avatar pic is the 60 strat that's right on the detail picture and of course the Bass VI.
The Burns Shadow Custom Signature Marvin isn't on the avatar either, but "technically" not Fiesta Red, but guards red.
I've a few more red guitars but that are not fiesta ones...


Cheers Rob

Here’s the 1956 Thunderbird Fiesta Red. That’s from an automotive paint resource. The Dupont paint codes are 2219H, 246-59548H, and 93-59543Z.

And here’s the 1959 Corvette Roman Red from a auto retouching paint specialist. As with the previous photo, the tones probably don’t reproduce well on-line. The Dupont codes are 2931LH and 93-93037H.

To add more uncertainty to the issue, an article in Vintage Guitar notes, “The name Fiesta Red was given to at least three other automotive red colors, all with distinct paint codes from the color (DuPont 2219-H) used by Fender. The DuPont paints 2523-H and 2610-H were both used in 1957, respectively by Ford/Mercury and Chrysler/DeSoto. In 1964, the name also appeared among the colors available on Ford Lincoln cars (DuPont 4294-LM).”

From the discussions and materials here, it appears:

1. In 1956, the new Ford Thunderbird debuted with a range of available colors, one of which was what Ford in its sales brochures called “Fiesta Red.” The paint was supplied by Dupont, but we do not know who coined the name. Considering the care with which automobile companies name the colors of their cars, it is very possible the name was chosen by Ford’s marketing department.

2. A story, repeated in Fender’s site, says George Fullerton created the hue at a local paintshop and named it “Fiesta Red.” Considering the use of the paint and the name for the 1956 Thunderbird and the fact that Fender tended to use Dupont paints, that story probably isn’t true.

3. Another story says that Leo Fender, who was close to Dupont, bought large stocks of Fiesta Red from Dupont, after GM’s Cadillac and other divisions rejected the color and before the paint was offered to Ford. That may be myth, but it probably is true that Leo Fender simply bought the paint from Dupont.

4. In the late 1950s, Fender did offer to paint a guitar in any Dupont color for an additional 5%. Fender states that Fiesta Red was its first “custom” color. We do not know if Fender offered the optional color by name or simply by reference to a Dupont color chart. Fender itself had no color selection chart until 1960..

5. In 1959, GM offered for the Corvette a Dupont paint that, in GM’s catalogs and material, was called “Roman Red.“ It appears close in hue and tone to Ford’s Fiesta Red, but the two colors have different Dupont color codes.

6. It is probably unlikely that the Fender catalog that Cliff and the Shadows pored over in1959 identified the color of the guitar they settled on. When Cliff ordered the Stratocaster, he simply wrote, “ we've decided to have the Stratocaster; please send us the red one with the gold-plated parts." It is also unlikely that Cliff and The Shadows learned (or cared) then what the name of the color was.

7. Dave Robinson noted that his original, untouched 1959 Strat, which is “a few digits away from 34346 , probably made during in the same week or month and it could well be the same paint batch ... is a perfect clone in colour to the Fiesta Red on the late 80s/early nineties AVRI Stratocasters.”

8. In 1960, Fender finally produced its (first) color chart, listing 14 custom colors. One of them was Fiesta Red.

All this leads me to the following conclusions:

A. The original color or 34346 was probably very close to “Fiesta Red,“ as we know it.

B. No one really knows whether the original color on 34346 carried a name and, if so, what the name was.

Now, I will try to go back to playing Shadows music.

Andy

Great pictures Dave!
For me this is what I was talking about the past 40 years.
It's obvious to see that different light give different shades....
The 59 looks red in one pic and pinkish in flash light, it's not hard to imagine this guitar does the same on stage.
I reckon that famous 34346 did the same in it's heydays!
So hence the hard to kill urban legend Flamingo Pink...
34346 and 34516 is not so far apart, the first had a maple neck and golden hardware on special order, the later has "only" the custom colour and rosewood neck a slabboard as standard.
The gilding at that time was done at the local jewellery/goldsmith shop.
In that period they made a few hundred guitars in a week time, so short sighted you could say made in the same week.....
But the neck-plates were made in large badges and arrived from the metal-shop corner, in the assembly department by the hundreds.
Known is that the plates are strung on pens mounted on the wall..... the employees who worked there mentioned the fact that the pins ware not always empty when new plates arrived, so the new ones were simply hung in front of the older plates....
So a rule of thump is serial-numbers allocate to a curtain week or so, is almost impossible.
Hence collectors always take the neck date as a guideline.
Unfortunately we don't know the neck dates of both guitars so....
I won't stick my hand in a fire to swear a oath both guitars were made in the same week let alone sprayed in the same few days.
However what are the odes that just in that between time the batch of red was running out and was changed for a freshly made batch and just this batch is Roman Red instead of fiesta....

Cheers Rob

Hi Dave
Do You know what color Your 34516 have if You compare it in the NCS, Natural Color System?

/Bertil

It's easy..... bring 3 guitars together !
The 343516 the AVRI and a OASIS strat...
Place them spooning in the same light take a colour sample with a colour sample chard or better a digital version of that.
Pictures would be nice.
If that could be arranged...hopefully it bring this discussion to bed for ever!
I bet the 343516 is just plain fiesta from the USA instead of the dozens misguided fiesta's of British make.
Nice to see the 343516 has the single layer pick guard with 8 screws which proof it's one of the very first slabboards...because later they got the 3 layer guard with first 8 and soon 11 screws.

Cheers Rob