Originally a full $35.00 less than it's Telecaster cousin…

1957 Fender Esquire.

This fifty-seven-year-old Blond beauty with a solid ash body weighs just  7.80 lbs. Fretted maple neck with a nut width of 1 5/8 inches, a scale length of 25 1/2 inches and a wonderful strong "V' profile. Maple fretboard with 21 frets, black dot position markers and small black dot side markers. Headstock decal with "Fender" spaghetti logo in silver with black trim and "Esquire" in black below it. Single "butterfly" string tree. Individual "single-line" Kluson Deluxe tuners with oval metal buttons, each one stamped "D-169400 / Patent No." on the underside. Four-bolt neck plate with serial number "-21916" between the top two screws. One single-coil Alnico pickup with 'staggered' pole-pieces angled in bridgeplate, with a huge output of 7.03k. Single-layer white plastic pickguard (0.06 inches thick) with five screws. Two controls (one volume, one tone) plus three-way "tone" switch with "top-hat" tip, all on metal plate adjoining pickguard. The potentiometers are stamped "304 704" (Stackpole, January 1957). Chrome knobs with flat tops and knurled sides. Telecaster/Esquire combined bridge/tailpiece with three steel saddles. The neck is dated in pencil "7-57" and the pickup cavity is dated in pencil "6/57". This guitar was most probably owned and played by a "slide" player and has some noticeable surface wear to the maple but there are no divots in the fretboard from string bending. The frets have been expertly replaced with slightly wider 0.10 gauge wire and the guitar feels and plays like a dream. The lovely grain of the ash body shows very well through the Blond finish, and taking into account a small scratch on the top bass bout, a few very minor edge marks, some "good old wear" to the bass side of the neck, and the usual light finish checking, this fifty-seven-year-old gem is in exceptionally fine (9.00) condition. One of the very best sounding and best looking Esquires we have ever seen with a nice 'star' provenance. Complete with its original "ashtray" bridge cover. Housed in a modern Fender "Tweed" hardshell case with brown leather ends and red plush lining (8.00). The price in 1957 was $164.50 for the guitar (a full $35.00 less than its Telecaster cousin)... plus a huge $49.50 for the case!

"Leo Fender's new solidbody was the instrument that we know now as the Fender Telecaster, effectively the world's first commercially successful solidbody electric guitar... The guitar was originally named the Fender Esquire and then the Fender Broadcaster, and it first went into production in 1950. It was a simple, effective instrument. It had a basic, single-cutaway, solid slab of ash for a body, with a screwed-on maple neck. Everything was geared to easy production. It had a slanted pickup mounted into a steel bridge-plate carrying three adjustable bridge-saddles, and the body was finished in a yellowish color known as blond. It was unadorned and like nothing else. It was ahead of its time (Tony Bacon, 50 Years of Fender, p. 10).

"After a false start the Esquire re-appeared... 1951, now with Fender's new adjustable truss-rod. It was offered in single-pickup format only, but otherwise was virtually identical to the two-pickup Telecaster. However, the Esquire's three-way selector functioned as a preset tone control or bypass switch, offering wide versatility from a one-pickup guitar. Perhaps surprisingly, the Esquire stayed in the line for 20 years" (Tony Bacon and Paul Day, The Fender Book, p. 10).