An Exceptionally Fine Late Fifties "Birds-Eye" Maple Telecaster.

1959 Fender Telecaster.

This fifty-five year-old "featherweight" Blond beauty weighs just 6.80 lbs. and has a nut width of just over 1 5/8 inches and a scale length of 25 1/2 inches. Solid ash body and one-piece fretted highly figured "birds-eye" maple neck with a medium to thin profile, 21 frets, and black dot position markers. Single "butterfly" string tree. Headstock decal with Fender "spaghetti" logo in silver with black trim and "Telecaster" in black below it. Individual single-line Kluson Deluxe tuners with oval metal buttons. The tuning keys are stamped "D-169400  PATENT NO." on the bottom base. Four-bolt neck plate with serial number ("37192") between the top two screws. One plain metal-cover "black-bottom" pickup with slot-head adjusting screws (at neck) with an output of 6.46k, and one black six-polepiece "copper-coated metal plate bottom" pickup with staggered polepieces (angled in bridgeplate) with an output of 6.77k. White single-layer ABS (.060 inches thick) pickguard with five screws. Two controls (one volume, one tone) plus three-way "CRL 1452" switch and original Daka-Ware black plastic "Top-Hat" tip, all on metal plate adjoining pickguard. "Taller" type knobs with flat tops and knurled sides. Telecaster combined bridge/tailpiece with three 1/4-inch steel threaded saddles, the screws angled at 90 degrees. The potentiometers are stamped "137 916" (CTS April 1959). This guitar is in exceptionally fine (9.00) condition. There is some fine checking on the body, a few dings on the sides, and a small amount of playing wear, mainly on the edges, where the guitar has rubbed against the player's body. The "birds-eye" maple neck is one of the prettiest that we have seen and the extra hard wood has resulted in virtually no fretboard wear. The lovely grain of the ash body shows very well through the finish and at just 6.80 lbs., this is certainly one of the lightest Telecasters that we have handled. Housed in the original "Export" tan hardshell case with burgundy plush lining (9.00).

This fine and totally original March 1959 Telecaster has no neck date, as usual, and "359" in blue pencil in the bridge pickup cavity. "After April 1959, the [neck] dating procedure was temporarily suspended for several months and then resumed in early 1960. Rumour has it that FENDER stopped marking any date because someone complained about an obscene message penciled on the neck of his new guitar!" (A.R. Duchossoir, The Fender Stratocaster, p. 66).

"From 1950 up to mid-1959, Telecaster guitars were exclusively fitted with a fretted one-piece maple neck…without a separate fingerboard. By mid-1959, the original Maple Neck was replaced by a rosewood-capped neck…In January 1967 a maple fingerboard officially became optional on most Fender electrics, but Telecaster guitars with a maple-capped neck were actually available well before 1967, either on a replacement or a custom order basis. The 2-piece maple neck from the 60s is easily distinguished from the original one-piece neck by both the lack of walnut plug above the nut and contrasting stripe (a.k.a. 'skunk stripe') on the back" (A.R. Duchossoir, The Fender Telecaster, p. 50). This guitar is one of the very last of the Telecasters with a one-piece fretted maple neck.