Winnipeg musician partners with Fender for Signature guitar

Ariel Posen is the latest musician to develop a signature, limited edition Fender Stratocaster.

A Winnipeg musician now has a custom Fender guitar that he can truly call his own.

Ariel Posen, who has performed with the Bros. Landreth and as a solo artist, recently partnered with Fender to launch a Custom Shop Limited Edition Stratocaster.

“It’s the greatest thing; it’s the full circle,” Posen told CTV News during a recent interview. “It’s like the culmination of it all, like you’re designing something first and foremost. At least 98 per cent of the reason why I would do something like this is to have an instrument that I can fully depend on and identify as my own thing. And when you finally get it, when you finally have it finished, and you’re playing it, if you’re not happy with it, then you probably didn’t do it right.”

Posen has had a relationship with Fender for multiple years, but the process to designing his own guitar started two-and-a-half years ago.

“I had been experimenting with a couple things; I’m always just having ideas and trying stuff out,” he said. “And I just happened to discuss the idea for something that I was just wanting to put together on my own, and they just suggested, ‘Why don’t we do a Signature guitar?’”

From there, Posen started collaborating with Fender, workshopping ideas for the guitar on how it should look and sound and trying it out until they were fully satisfied.

“The process was very organic. It was basically, ‘How do we build you something that’s truly and authentically you?’” he said. “And I based it off of a couple models that I have and a couple things that I’m used to using and having that I feel genuinely identify as me.”

The guitar includes a pair of AP-90 pickups, which are among Posen’s favourite elements.

“Those pickups don’t exist in any other guitars,” he said. “Their voiced to how I sound, and how I like guitars to sound.”

Returning to Winnipeg in December

Posen will be getting lots of practice with his new guitar this fall and winter. He will embark on the Future Present Tense tour throughout North America starting in October.

The tour will end with a show in his hometown on Dec. 12 at The Park Theatre.

“Winnipeg is always home, and whether or not it’s filled with familiar faces or even people, there’s this energy of being at home,” Posen said.

“There’s something special about this place. I’m just grateful to get to do this in general, but to get to do it at home, being a guy that grew up cutting his teeth often times playing gigs to nobody at Dylan O’Connor’s on Portage or somewhere when I was like 18 or 19, it doesn’t grow old to come back once a year or once every two years to do a real show.”

Tickets for the Winnipeg show go on sale Friday.