The Summer of Love…
"Pink Paisley"

1968 Fender Telecaster (Pink Paisley)

Fender's first reissue, being a reissue of the original Precision Bass. This original Pink Paisley Bass from the summer of love has a 12 3/4-inch-wide, 1 3/4 inch thick body and weighs 11.00 lbs. Solid alder body with the very rare Pink Paisley finish. A full Fender bass scale length of 34 inches, a nice fat nut width of  just under 1 3/4 inches and a really comfortable medium-to-thick neck profile. One-piece fretted maple neck (with a skunk stripe) with 20 original jumbo frets and black dot position markers. The neck is stamped "23 JUL 68 C." Single circular string tree. Headstock decal with Fender logo in silver with black trim and with small circled "R" (for "Registered"), with "TELECASTER BASS" and one patent number "PAT. 2,968,204" in black beneath it. Individual Fender "paddle gear" tuners with "Fender" logo and with paddle-shaped metal buttons. Four-bolt neck plate with large Fender "F" logo and with the serial number "251376" between the two top screws. Single-coil gray pickup with four polepieces with an output of 6.45k. Original clear plexiglass pickguard (.011 inches thick) with eleven screws. Thumb rest with two screws on treble side of pickguard. Two controls (one volume, one tone) on a chrome-plated metal plate adjoining the pickguard. Chrome knobs with flat tops and knurled sides. The potentiometers are stamped "304 6631" (Stackpole August 1966). Combined two-saddle bridge/tailpiece. Complete with the two original pickup and bridge covers. This is by far the finest and all original example we have ever seen. The guitar has hardly been played and has obviously spent the majority of its life in its original case. The color of this guitar is sensational being more of a violet pink with virtually no fading. The chrome parts are fresh and bright. Housed in the original Fender three-latch, rectangular black hardshell case with reddish orange plush lining and black leather ends (9.25). Also included is the original "Ace" woven pink and multi-color guitar strap, the original Fender "Tolex" case hang-tag, the original 12-page July 1968 Fender Price List (showing the original price of $289.50 + $64.50 for the case), the original 48-page "Fender lovin' care" 1969 Catalog (with 12-page price list), and two original late sixties badges, "Fender lovin' care" & "I Love the Beatles".

Now I will be super critical regarding the condition:

The body is totally free from the usual 'dreaded' peeling but there are cracks in the polyurethane finish - but no lifting of the 'pink paisley wallpaper'. There is some fine finish checking and a few small 'dings' on the sides of the body - mostly the size of a match-head (the most significant ding being on the bass top-edge adjacent to the bridge. The original jumbo frets show almost no playing wear, as does the maple fretboard. There is minimal playing wear on the treble edge of the neck from the first to the twelfth fret. As mentioned earlier the color of this guitar is sensational being more of a violet pink with virtually no fading. The chrome parts are fresh and bright.

"Out of the psychedelic era came the paisley finish, which is actually adhesive-backed paper oversprayed with a polyester clear coat" (George Gruhn and Walter Carter, Electric Guitars and Basses, p. 147).

"Fender has gone back more than 15 years to reintroduce the original solid-body electric bass. Recently, veterans and newcomers alike in the music field have rediscovered the smooth playing action and moving sounds of the Telecaster Bass. The slender all-maple neck is remarkably fast, truss-rod reinforced and set for low string, high-speed playing action. The single pickup is located for the maximum string response and is adjustable at either end for custom string balance. Both the tone and volume control are located for easy access and permit a wide variation of tone values. Two individual bridges are adjustable for both length and height enabling the player to achieve perfect string intonation." (Fender 'Lovin' care catalog).

"Out of the psychedelic era came the paisley finish, which is actually adhesive-backed paper oversprayed with a polyester clear coat" (George Gruhn and Walter Carter, Electric Guitars and Basses, p. 147).

"The summer of love was explored by Fender marketing in 1968 but the bloom had faded by 1969. The paisley and floral paper was applied to the top and back of the instrument. The sides were shaded with a sunburst technique to match the tone of the paper. The side-color had a pearl quality found on hot rod cars. A thick clear coat provided the protection. The clear pickguard was misted around the pickup cavity [guitars only] to camouflage the body route…

In 1968, the original Precision Bass design was re-introduced as the Telecaster Bass with the majority of the original appointments: the strings went through the body; the bridge had two saddles like the original; the pickguard, covers, headstock and controls were resurrected, as was the slab body. Other features differed: the pickguard was white, rather than the original black single sheet Bakelite; the neck was constructed with a maple fingerboard lamination cap, unlike the original one-piece maple design. Some models featured the original one-piece maple neck later that year. The ferrules on the new Telecaster Bass were smaller and no longer seated flush into the body like the original 1950s model" (J.W. Black and Albert Molinaro, The Fender Bass: An Illustrated History, pp. 53 and 49).

The 1968 Telecaster Bass also bore the unusual distinction of being briefly issued with Fender’s infamous pink paisley and blue floral finishes. These were achieved by applying paisley and floral wallpaper to the top and back, with the sides shaded using a sunburst technique to match the paper and a thick clear coat covering the entire instrument. 1968’s Telecaster Bass occupies a special place in Fender history, if for no other reason than that it was the company’s first-ever “reissue” instrument. Many years later, in the 1980s, the modern Fender corporation would start building the first of the great many reissue guitars and basses that now comprise a large and popular portion of the company’s stable of instruments. But such an idea was highly unusual at the CBS-era Fender in the late 1960s, when designers first decided to look backward rather than forward for a “new” bass guitar design. Thus the arrival of the interestingly named Telecaster Bass. Basically a reissue of the original version of the Precision Bass, there was really very little about it that had anything to do with the Telecaster guitar. True, it had the distinctive headstock shape of the Telecaster, but that shape was also a feature of the original Precision Bass headstock.

The Telecaster Bass owed its existence to the fact that its true direct ancestor, the revolutionary Precision, was redesigned not once but twice within several years of its 1951 debut; first in 1954 and again even more dramatically in 1957. So substantial were the changes, in fact, that the Precision Bass of 1957 onward bore little resemblance to its 1951 predecessor. It was this long-discarded design—that of the original ’51 Precision—that was re-introduced in May 1968 as Fender’s “newest” bass.

Like the first Precision basses, the Telecaster Bass had a slab body, one single-coil pickup, the aforementioned Telecaster-style headstock, string-through-body design with a two-saddle bridge, large chrome bridge and pickup covers, a pickguard that covered the entire upper bout and controls mounted on a Telecaster-style chrome plate. Priced at the time at $302.50, it was less expensive than a Jazz Bass ($356.50) but slightly more expensive than a Precision Bass ($293.50).

This first Telecaster Bass version had three different headstock decals. The earliest was a regular silver Telecaster guitar logo with the word “bass” added underneath; only prototypes are known to have this decal. The second decal was the larger black Telecaster Bass logo, with “Bass” in the same script style as “Fender.” The third and most common decal had the silver Fender script with the words “Telecaster Bass” in a sans-serif font underneath. The 1970 Fender catalog page shows the original version of the Telecaster Bass with covered single-coil pickup and Telecaster-style control plate; the 1972 catalog page showed the humbucker-equipped second incarnation with an enlarged pickguard.