Editing Eric Clapton Stratocaster (section)

==Construction and design variations==
Several variations of Clapton's personal guitar were made by the Fender Custom Shop throughout the years, including fancy versions with ash bodies, quilted or maple tops, abalone dot position inlays, matching headstocks, gold hardware and white pearloid pickguards, made by Senior Master Builder '''J. W. Black'''. Many of these guitars were sold for charity auctions for the [[Crossroads Centre]] of Antigua, the drug and alcohol addiction rehabilitation facility founded on the small, idyllic Caribbean island in 1998. They include the Gold Leaf Stratocaster of 1996 (used during the Legends and Montserrat concerts in 1997) and the [[John Matos|Crashocasters]] (signature model Stratocasters hand-painted by New York-based street artist [[John Matos]], better known as [[John Matos|Crash]]), used by Clapton from 2001 to 2004.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.zuitar.com/guitar/100211-Crash_Stratocaster.html|title=Crash Stratocaster|publisher=Zuitar.com|accessdate=2008-08-12}}{{dead link|date=March 2014}}</ref>

'''The Gold Leaf Stratocaster'''

The original Gold Leaf guitar was built by Fender Master Builders [[Fender Custom Shop|Mark Kendrick and John Luis Campo]] as a custom order for Eric Clapton at the time of the 50th Anniversary of the firm in 1996. Clapton used the guitar for his 1997 Far-Eastern tour, the European ''Legends'' jazz concerts with [[Marcus Miller]], [[Joe Sample]], [[Steve Gadd]] and [[David Sanborn]] and the [[Music for Montserrat|Montserrat benefit concert]] at the [[Royal Albert Hall]] before selling it to Christies for US $455,000.

The [[Fender Custom Shop]] reissued the Gold Leaf Stratocaster after 8 years of absence as a limited-edition run of 50 pieces. Each guitar was built to Eric's exacting specifications, with Fender's [[Vintage Noiseless]] pickups and a standard tone control instead of the Gold Lace Sensor pickups and TBX tone circuit (re-introduced in 2009)  found on the original 1996 model.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.zuitar.com/guitar/100212-Eric_Clapton_Gold_Leaf_Stratocaster.html|title=Eric Clapton Gold Leaf Stratocaster|publisher=Zuitar.com|accessdate=2008-08-12}}{{dead link|date=March 2014}}</ref>

'''The John Matos "Crashocasters"'''

In January 2007, visual artist John "Crash" Matos finished painting the 50th guitar body for a limited edition run of Stratocasters (50 total) from the Fender Custom Shop. The project, which Matos began in late 2004, was inspired by the graffiti-style Stratocaster bodies he had painted for Eric Clapton, one of which, known as Crash-3, was sold in the 2004 Christie's Eric Clapton Crossroads Auction for $321,000.

Since the beginning of the Custom Shop project in 2004, Crash has chronicled his work on the 50 Fender Custom Shop guitars (referred to in this article as the Fender Custom Shop Crashocasters) in his online Modern Guitars journal titled "Crash Pad".