A Near Mint 1985 Rosewood Telecaster.

1985 Fender (Japan) Rosewood 'Japan Re-Issue' 1969 Telecaster.

This very early Japanese reissue 'Rosewood' Telecaster weighs 9.60 lbs. and has a nut width of just under 1 11/16 inches and a scale length of 25 1/2 inches. Two-piece Rosewood body with a center 'sandwich' of maple. One-piece rosewood neck with a maple 'skunk-stripe' and 21 original medium frets and pearl dot position markers. Headstock decal with "Fender" 'transitional logo in gold with black trim. Individual vintage-style "no-name" Fender [Kluson] Deluxe tuners with oval metal buttons. Single "butterfly" string tree. Four-bolt neck plate with "Fender" stamped between the top two screws. Two hot single-coil pickups: one plain metal-cover pickup at neck with an output of 7.74k and one black six-polepiece pickup angled in bridgeplate with an output of 7.03k. Three-layer black/white/black plastic pickguard with eight screws. Two controls (one volume, one tone) plus three-way selector switch with 'round' tip, all on metal plate adjoining pickguard. Chrome knobs with flat tops and knurled sides. Fender combined bridge/tailpiece stamped with the serial number ("A018493"). This guitar is in near mint (9.25) condition with just a couple of very tiny surface marks, one on the back of the neck behind the fourth fret, the other on the back of the headstock. Housed in the Original Fender USA 'Form-Fit' three-latch rectangular hardshell case with black plush lining (9.25).

The first Rosewood Telecaster was a gift to Beatle George Harrison for use in the movie ‘Let It Be’. Roger Rossmeisl and Phillip Kubicki (employed by Fender at the time) made two prototypes and chose the best for Harrison. The guitar body was made with a thin layer of maple sandwiched between a solid rosewood back and top. The rosewood neck had a separate rosewood fingerboard glued on. The whole guitar had a special satin polyurethane finish (for more info read “Beatles Gear” by Andy Babiuk). The Rosewood Telecaster was added to the regular production line in 1969 at $375. Production models differed from George’s slightly. They were made with a one-piece rosewood neck, and had gloss polyurethane finishes. While early examples were solid, like George’s, the guitars were eventually lightened by hollowing out the two body halves. Large numbers of Rosewood Telecatsters were never produced, and by 1972 it was discontinued. Fender Japan reissued the guitar in 1985.

"In 1984 on the other side of the world, the new Fender Japan operation was busy adding new models to its Vintage reissue series. This time the magnifying glass was trained on a wider portion of Fender history. The earliest style of P-Bass was examined for the '51 Precision Bass and a little binding practice resulted in the '62 Custom Telecaster…
at the end of January 1985, almost exactly 20 years after acquiring it, CBS confirmed that it would sell Fender to ten "employees and foreign distributors," led by Bill Schultz… The problems Schultz and his team faced were legion. Probably the most immediate was the fact that the Fullerton factories were not included in the deal, and so US production stopped in February 1985… The Japanese operation became Fender's lifeline, providing much-needed product to a company that still had no US factory. Around 80 per cent of the guitars that Fender US sold from late 1984 to mid 1986 were made in Japan. All the guitars in Fender's 1985 catalog were made in Japan, including the new Contemporary Stratocasters and Telecasters…"