One of the Earliest Slab-Board Custom Telecasters

This forty-eight-year-old two-Tone Sunburst Custom beauty weighs just 7.50 lbs. and has a nut width of just over 1 5/8 inches and a scale length of 25 1/2 inches. Solid alder body, single-bound on the top and the back, maple neck, and a 'slab' Brazilian Rosewood fretboard with 21 frets and clay dot position markers. Single "butterfly" string tree. Headstock with "Fender" spaghetti logo in gold with black trim, "Custom Telecaster" in black below it. Individual Kluson Deluxe 'single-line' tuners with oval metal buttons stamped on the inside "D-169400 PATENT NO." The neck is undated as usual for an early '59, the bridge pickup cavity is dated "5/59" in pencil. Four-bolt neck plate with serial number ("45460") between the top two screws. One plain metal-cover 'black-bottom' pickup (at neck) with a huge output of 6.75k and one black-bottom six-polepiece pickup with staggered polepieces (angled in bridgeplate) with an output of 6.49k. The potentiometers are stamped "137 819" (CTS May 1958). Three-layer (black/white/black) plastic pickguard with eight screws. Two controls (one volume, one tone) plus three-way pickup selector switch with "top-hat" tip, all on metal plate adjoining pickguard. Chrome knobs with flat tops and knurled sides. Telecaster combined bridge/tailpiece with three 'threaded' steel saddles. Complete with the original ashtray bridge cover which is engraved "Bill Obernolte". Housed in the original Fender 'Tweed' hardshell case with dark orange plush lining (8.75).

A fantastic playing, wonderful sounding '59 Custom Telecaster for half the price of a totally original example…

"Leo Fender's new solidbody was the instrument that we know now as the Fender Telecaster, effectively the world's first commercially successful solidbody electric guitar...The guitar was originally named the Fender Esquire and then the Fender Broadcaster, and it first went into production in 1950. It was a simple, effective instrument. It had a basic, single-cutaway, solid slab of ash for a body, with a screwed-on maple neck. Everything was geared to easy production. It had a slanted pickup mounted into a steel bridge-plate carrying three adjustable bridge-saddles, and the body was finished in a yellowish color known as blond. It was unadorned and like nothing else. It was ahead of its time. (Tony Bacon, 50 Years of Fender, p. 10).

"After a false start the Esquire reappeared...in 1951, now with Fender's new adjustable truss-rod. It was offered in single-pickup format only, but otherwise was virtually identical to the two-pickup Telecaster. However, the Esquire's three-way selector functioned as a preset tone control or bypass switch, offering wide versatility from a one-pickup guitar. Perhaps surprisingly, the Esquire stayed in the line for 20 years" (Tony Bacon and Paul Day, The Fender Book, p. 10).

"The June 1959 NAMM convention held in New York saw the debut of the TELECASTER and ESQUIRE CUSTOM. Intended as a deluxe version of the regular models, they were characterized by what Fender called 'the custom treatment of the body,' i.e. a sunburst finish with a contrasting white binding and a triple-ply white pickguard. Otherwise, with the exception of an alder body, their basic appointments were identical to the mid-59 'standard' Telecaster and Esquire models" (A.R. Duchossoir, The Fender Telecaster, pp. 19-20).