An Incredibly Rare and Near Mint, All Original, One Owner, Late Sixties Sonic Blue Telecaster

1969 Fender Telecaster

This extraordinarily rare 'custom color' late sixties Sonic Blue Telecaster weighs just 7.30 lbs. and has a nut width of just under 1 5/8 and a scale length of 25 1/2 inches. Solid alder body, one-piece maple neck with a wonderful medium to thick profile, 21 original medium frets and inlaid black dot position markers. Headstock decal with "Fender" logo in black with gold trim, "Telecaster" in black beside it, and two numbers (Pat. 2,573,254  3,143,028) beneath "Fender." Individual Fender "F" tuners with octagonal metal buttons. Single "butterfly" string tree with nylon spacer. Four-bolt neck plate with large Fender "F" logo and serial number "278848" between the top two screws. One plain metal-cover pickup (at neck)  and one light gray-bottom six-polepiece pickup (angled in bridgeplate) with strong outputs of 6.31k & 6.89k respectively. Three-layer white/black/white (over pearloid) plastic pickguard with eight screws. Under the pickguard on the body, stamped in dark blue "Assembled by
L[upe C.] Duarte/19". Two controls (one volume, one tone) and one three-way selector switch (with black plastic "Top-Hat" tip), all on metal plate adjoining pickguard. Chrome knobs with flat tops and knurled sides. Fender combined bridge/tailpiece with original chrome "ashtray" bridge cover. The neck is stamped in green "3 09 019 B" and the pots are dated "137 6634" (CTS August 1966). The original sonic blue is bright and fresh and the neck shows very little sign of wear. The original frets also have very little playing wear. Overall this forty-nine year old guitar is in near mint (9.25) condition with just a few tiny surface chips on the edges of the body. Complete with the original bridge-cover "Ashtray", the original 'Summer of Love' woven guitarstrap with it's original plastic sleeve, the original hang-tag with matching serial number, the original owners manual, the original May 15, 1969 twelve page Fender price list., etc., etc. Housed in its original Fender three-latch, rectangular black hardshell case with dark orange plush lining, near fine except missing part of the silver plastic logo (9.00).

Lupe C. Duarte worked for Leo Fender from 1947 (wiring amplifiers) and later guitars. She joined him again at Leo Fender & George Fullerton's Music Man business. Lupe Duarte died in 2009.

Sonic Blue is one of the rarest of the Fender custom colors. Many of Fenders colors were from the automotive industry and Sonic Blue was used on Cadillac automobiles for the year 1956 and then on Fender guitars from 1960 thru 1972.