The "Hockey-Stick" of the Beat Generation!

This great custom color twelve-string guitar weighs just 8.50 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, maple neck, and rosewood fretboard with 21 frets and inlaid pearl dot position markers. "Hockey-stick" headstock in Candy Apple Red. Headstock decal with Fender logo in gold with black trim, with "ELECTRIC XII" in black below it, and "PAT. 3,143,028 2,960,900 3,177,283 & PAT. PEND." in black in two lines below that. One "bracket" string guide. Six-on-a-side Fender "F" tuners with octagonal metal buttons. Four-bolt neck plate with large Fender backward "F" logo and with serial number ("137424") between the top two screws. The neck is dated "12 FEB 66 B" and the pots are dated "304 65 45" (November 1965). Two powerful black split single-coil pickups with outputs of 9.80k and 9.27k. Three-layer (white/black/white) plastic pickguard with seventeen screws. Two controls (one volume, one tone) and jack socket, all on metal plate adjoining pickguard, plus one four-way rotary selector switch on pickguard. Black plastic knobs with white numbering and silver tops. Fender twelve-saddle combined bridge/tailpiece. A few very small "dings" on the sides, the most noticeable being on the treble bout, and a couple of tiny marks on the top. Otherwise this super rare custom color twelve-string is as near mint as one could wish for. Housed in its original Fender black hardshell case with orange plush lining (9.00).

The Electric XII hit the music stores in the summer of 1965. "Electric 12-strings had recently been popularised by The Beatles and The Byrds, who both used Rickenbackers, so Fender joined in the battle with their own rather belated version. There were no surprises in the guitar's body -- it was that familiar offset-waist design again (and at $349 the 12-string was pitched at the same price as the Jazzmaster). The Electric XII had a long headstock, necessary to carry the extra machine heads, finishing in a distinctive curved end that has earned it the nickname 'hockey-stick'. An innovation was the Electric XII's 12-saddle bridge which allowed for precise adjustments of individual string heights and intonation, a luxury hitherto unknown on any 12-string guitar. But the 12-string craze of the 1960s was almost over and the Electric XII proved shortlived, lasting in the line only until 1968" (Tony Bacon and Paul Day, The Fender Book, p. 44).