New Old Stock!

This Blonde Telecaster Thinline is in mint condition and weighs just 6.30 lbs! With a nut width of 1 5/8 inches and a scale length of 25 1/2 inches. Hollow ash body and one-piece fretted maple neck with 21 frets and black dot position markers. Headstock decal with "Fender" logo in black with gold trim, with "Serial Number S701979" in black below it and "Telecaster" in black in bold letters beside it, with "Thinline" and "Made in U.S.A." in black below "Telecaster." Two "butterfly" string trees. Individual Fender "F" tuners with octagonal metal buttons. Two Fender metal-cover split-polepiece humbucker pickups with outputs of 10.47k and 10.02k. Three-layer (white/black/white) plastic re-styled pickguard. Two controls (one volume, one tone) plus three-way selector switch, all on pickguard. Chrome knobs with flat tops and knurled sides. Fender fully adjustable six-saddle combined bridge/tailpiece. This guitar is "new old stock" -- never sold or played! The pots are dated "1377551" ("137"=CTS pots and "7551"=the 51st week of 1975, i.e. December 1975). The end of the neck is stamped in green "07031672." ("07"=Tele Thinline; "03"= Maple neck; "16"= week of year; "7" = 1977; "2"= day of week) i.e. Tuesday April 19th, 1977. Housed in its original Fender black hardshell case with dark orange plush lining (9.25). With original case keys.

"Introduced in 1968, this model was an attempt by Fender to reduce the weight of the solid Telecaster by hollowing out sections of the body -- and the guitar even included a token f-hole as a visual clue to its semi-solid status. The Thinline at first retained the standard Tele pickup layout, but with a restyled pickguard" (Tony Bacon and Paul Day, The Fender Book, p. 47).

The Telecaster Thinline was "basically a Telecaster body with pockets hollowed-out from the rear, including a bigger one opening into the top via an 'f' hole. With the exception of the pickguard shape modified to accomodate [sic] the new semi-acoustic design, the Thinline was otherwise identical to a regular '68 Telecaster in terms of neck, electronics and hardware. But its body was about half the weight of a regular Telecaster. The new variant was first listed in July 1968 for $319.50…To convey the idea of a lighter, almost acoustic guitar, the Thinline was at first released in only natural ash and mahogany finishes with a 2-piece maple neck…By 1969, it also became available with a 3-tone sunburst finish and an optional rosewood-capped neck" (A.R. Duchossoir, The Fender Telecaster, p. 23).