The Most Beautiful 'Franken-Tele'

1964 Fender Telecaster

This 12 3/4-inch, wide, 1 5/8 thick Telecaster weighs just 6.50 lbs. and has a solid ash body. Original early 1959 maple neck with a slab-board "Brazilian' rosewood fretboard with 21 original frets and clay dot position markers. The neck has a nut width of 1 5/8 inches and a scale length of 25 1/2 inches. Original "spaghetti" logo in silver outlined in black, with "Telecaster" in black beneath. Single butterfly string tree with 'small' nylon spacer. Individual Kluson deluxe "double-line" tuners with oval metal buttons. The end of the neck is not dated as is quite common with early 1959 examples. Four-bolt neckplate with serial number "L20881" between the top two screws. One plain metal-cover 'black-bottom' pickup at neck with an output of 6.28k, and one black 'grey-bottom' six-polepiece pickup angled in bridgeplate with an output of 6.82k (stamped on the underside in yellow "APR 22 1964". Three-layer white over balck plastic pickguard with eight screws. Two controls (one volume, one tone) plus three-way selector switch with "top-hat" tip, all on metal plate adjoining pickguard. The potentiometers are stamped "137 6416" (CTS April 1964). Chrome knobs with flat tops and knurled sides. Fender combined tailpiece and bridge. There is some wear to the original frets - but they certainly have plenty of life left in them. There is some light playing wear to the varnish on both sides of the neck between the first and seventh frets. There is a small area of surface loss (from a cigarette burn?) to the face of the headstock by the low E tuner. Housed in an early 1970s Fender three-latch, rectangular black hardshell case with red plush lining (9.00).

Eight years a go we bought an (all original - no refret of refinish) 1959 'slab-board' Telecaster neck… it has sat here and looked at us as if to say 'I ain't got nobody' - please help me!'
Listening to this pitiful cry we searched high and low for a suitable '59 body - but to no avail
Last year we came across an original 1964 Telecaster body which had been re-finished (nitro-cellulose) in Sonic Blue (with some very light and perfect finish checking) to such a high standard that we could not resist beginning the 'project'
We contacted our friend and master luthier Scott Lentz and asked him to 're-build' to exact '64 Fender Factory specifications. We then contacted another of our friends - master vintage parts supplier - Bruce Hastell (HTH Vintage Guitars) and asked him to source all of the original parts including two original 1964 pickups and an original 1964 Telecaster wiring harness with potentiometers and capacitors complete.
Every single part on this guitar (except of course the '59 neck) is original from 1964 - from the string-tree washer all the way down to every single screw and even an original early '64 neck plate with serial number.

The guitar arrived back here early this week and I had an excited telephone call from Scott Lentz "what do you think David - sounds great doesn't she?"

So folks, making her debut today - we have 'Franken-Tele' but unlike Mary Shelley's famous man-made monster - this is a very, very beautiful guitar.

She sounds just like the combination of all original '64 parts should - A 1964 Telecaster

She plays with a very special feel - she has the far superior 'slab-board' neck which was only available from mid 1959 through August 1962. The neck profile is typical of 1959 with a neck thickness rising gently from 0.79 behind the nut, to 0.85 behind the fifth fret, to 0.95 being the twelfth fret and finally 0.99 inches behind the fifteenth fret.