:( they both have, apart from being signed, mine was also one of the last in the uk. the surf green tele that was n the shop i bought mine in might have been the last surf green one in the u.k.
the owner was telling me that when richie did the store day they had a talk about the guitars and i found out some interesting bits and pieces
1) they were discontinued throught lack of sales which shocked the hell out of me as it's an incredible guitar. they're very popular in certain area's but completely unsupported in others. what i'm taking from that is, basically guys in the states who know these love them but because they were never exported there, they never got the sales. they were imported for europe by fender europe as it didn't compete with any current item. a few years back the order came down from on high that jap guitars were just for the jap market, so essentially cutting off another market for them. this guitar is the "firefly" of guitars lol never given a chance
2) even though they were in production from the 90's there were only (and this came from richies mouth apparently) something like 400 of each colour produced, so the guitar is a lot rarer than you think.
3) richie didn't use some handmade custom shop model for touring and only put his name to this. He used these production line guitars for touring and studio work. he also signed off on all the guitars produced. The current red tele he's being seen with is a prototype of some description.
i thought it was interesting anyway lol
