In this video "Exploring the Chris Shiflett Cleaver Telecaster Deluxe | Artist Signature Series | Fender" Chris discusses his signature Cleaver guitar from Fender and says:

Hey, I'm Chris Shiflett, and I'm out here hanging out at Fender today, and I'm very excited to talk about my new signature model, the American-made Cleaver. It's such an amazing thing to have your name on a Fender. You know, this logo means a lot to guitar players. That's like, you know, one of the big two. Really, it's always a source of pride. And to have gone through a few different versions of my signature models over the years has been a lot of fun. You know, I've learned a lot, but this thing is really special. It's it's uh, it's I think it's going to sit really nicely uh with the other two. This one kind of sits neatly between the two of them. It feels like a like a nod to certain aspects of the past, but it's kind of new at the same time.

The first Fender I ever played was my brother Mike's Strat. The original version of my signature model was based on I had gotten a um, I think it's a 72, you know, with the wide-range pickups in it, and I loved it. And I used it a lot for my solo stuff 'cause it had just a nice jangle to it, but it wasn't quite gritty enough for for what we do in Foo Fighters. So the original version we put uh humbuckers into it, and then that was great, and that's for that big, you know, rock sound that that we that we have. But somewhere along the line, I started using uh some guitars with P90s, and I just fell in love with the P90s. And they nailed it on the pickups, man. The pickups are great. Really sound good. The P90s just kind of sit in a perfect spot to cover a lot of ground for for what I do in Foos. If you think about our guitar tones, Pat tends to be pretty heavy, you know, saturated overdrive. Dave's a a little, you know, he's still pretty gritty, but maybe a step down from that. And then I love the P90 'cause it just kind of sits in a different place for for what we do. So there's kind of a range of sound, and it works with with sort of what my role in the band is.

As far as the colors, the pickguard is technically mint. It reads white. This red, this was 100% inspired by my love of Arsenal Football Club. That was kind of the inspiration of this, and it's just a classic 60s color. The charcoal, we looked at a few different colors um, and uh, and made some prototypes, and, and the the charcoal just jumped out at me. I just think it's a cool color. I you don't see too many of them around, and it just it just looks nice. It's you know, you don't know until you see it all, you know, all built and put together how it's going to read um, and the charcoal was just it seemed like a good uh, a good balance to the red.

The name Cleaver came from um exactly that actually. So you need something that's going to cut through and have its own kind of little sonic space. So yeah, just that was it. Hacked through like a Cleaver.

So some of my favorite features on this thing, well, first off, one of the key differences is we painted the headstock, so which gives it I don't know, it just gives it kind of a a little 60s pizzazz, which I like. We have the rosewood fretboard. We got the block inlays, so that's a little bit different than the production model. And these pickups are noiseless P90s, which you know, anybody that plays P90s knows that they can be a little noisy on stage sometimes, but not these. They're great. And we put 500k pots in in in here as well, so you have a nice taper. Noways, you know, I have all my channel changing and everything, but when I was growing up, everything was in the hands. I never had an amp that had multiple channels or anything. So if you needed to clean up, you just got to roll off the volume a little bit. And that's what I love about these pots. You get a nice slow easy taper on them.

The finish on the neck was was a was a big thing that we worked on 'cause it uh as far as you know, the sort of the color and the aesthetic, but also the feel. A lot of guitars nowadays can be kind of gummy on the finish, and this one is is not. And we worked uh quite a bit to to find the perfect balance, you know, so it's got a nice finish on it, but you won't hang you up when you're playing live. And I like the painted headstock, and I like the way it looks with the rosewood fretboard. It just the whole thing kind of just looks nice. I'm always a sucker for block inlays, you know, yeah, all that stuff.

I think this guitar works, you know, for me for everything I do because the P90 is like you can get like a real nice twang out of it for when I'm doing more kind of Americana country rock kind of flavored stuff. And then it just grits up real nice with still with a lot of clarity for the heavy rock stuff. So just for everything that I do, this this kind of covers all the bases.

I was kind of a late bloomer as a songwriter, really. I didn't really start writing songs till I was probably in my late 20s. And I figured out kind of over the years, both with playing with songwriting, the only way for me to kind of work through moments where you're kind of in the doldrums or maybe not inspired is just to play. You know, the more I play, if I'm I probably write most of my songs sitting on the couch watching soccer highlights, you know, and just with a guitar in my hands, just noodling around, and then you kind of oh wait, what's that? So yeah, I think just the more you play, the more the more you find the ideas.

When I was a little kid taking guitar lessons at Jensen's music in Santa Barbara, the last thing I ever even dreamt of was that someday there would be a Fender hanging in a guitar store somewhere with my name on it. So it's just kind of one of those things that that wasn't even part of the dream 'cause I just never like, I just never would have considered it. So to have that be the reality now is it's wild.