'Slab-Board.' Beautifully grained Blonde ash body with white plastic pickguard, 'flat-top' volume and tone knobs and a three-way selector switch. This beauty weighs in at just 7.3 lbs and has a creamy and expressive 6.98k neck pickup, and a super hot and screaming 6.40k flat polepiece bridge pickup. Three-saddle raised-sides bridge with through-body stringing. The most comfortable maple neck (25 1/2 inch scale) with a nut width of 1 5/8 inches, and rosewood slab board fretboard (with original frets) that virtually plays itself. Kluson Deluxe single line tuners and a single "butterfly" string guide retainer. Apart from some very minor chipping to the edges, this is a wonderful and totally original example. Housed in a somewhat worn, late sixties Fender black hardshell case with orange plush lining.

In the summer of 1950, Leo Fender announced the production of the first ever solid body electric guitar… the Broadcaster. Following a request from the Gretsch company in February 1951 to stop using the name Broadcaster, as they already had a drum kit with the same name, the Fender factory simply used clipped Broadcaster decals until April 1951, when the new name decided upon for the Fender solid electric was Telecaster… a name certainly appropriate, fresh from the new age of television and telecasts. Thus in 1951, the wheels were set in motion for radical changes, not only in the guitar field, but also in the whole music industry …

1959 was a turning pointing in the early history of Telecaster guitars. It was the year when the original one-piece maple neck was (temporarily) discontinued and replaced by a more conventional two-piece neck with a separate rosewood fretboard. The Jazzmaster, introduced at the July 1958 NAM show, was the first Fender electric offered with a rosewood fretboard. In 1959 it was decided to shift all guitars to rosewood-capped necks. Such a radical evolution was probably brought about by problems of wear on the clear-lacquered maple necks as well as the positive reaction of dealer's vis-à-vis the new Jazzmaster neck. At any rate, by the summer of 1959, all Telecaster guitars were produced with rosewood-capped necks. This earliest variant of the rosewood cap, which lasted until 1962, is milled flat on the neck, hence its usual slab board nickname because of a thicker layer of rosewood. The success of the Telecaster needs no explanation, with players from Muddy Waters to Bruce Springs teen, Steve Cropper to Keith Richard's, Eric Clapton to David Rumour and so many others including one of my favorite players of all time, the legendary Mickey Green of Johnny Kid and The Pirates.