Exceptionally Rare 1966 Lake Placid Blue Telecaster

1966 Fender Telecaster

This fifty-three year old 12 3/4-inch-wide "custom-color" Telecaster weighs just 7.90 lbs. and has a 'B' nut width of just over 1 5/8 inches and a scale length of 25 1/2 inches. Solid alder body, one-piece maple neck with a wonderful medium to thick profile, and veneer rosewood fretboard with 21 original thin frets and pearloid dot position markers. Headstock with "Fender" 'transition' logo in gold with black trim, "Telecaster" in black beneath it, and "Pat 2,573,254  3,143,028" beneath that. Single "butterfly" string tree. Individual dual-line Kluson Deluxe tuners with oval metal buttons and "D-169400 / Patent No" stamped on the underside. The end of the neck is stamped "3 SEP 66B." Four-bolt Fender "F" neck plate with serial number "170559" stamped between the top two screws. One plain metal-cover pickup (at neck) with an output of 7.14k and one 'gray-bottom' six-polepiece pickup with staggered polepieces (angled in bridgeplate) with an output of 6.19k. The potentiometers are stamped "304 6631" (Stackpole August 1966). Three-layer white over black plastic pickguard with eight screws. Two controls (one volume, one tone) plus three-way pickup selector switch, all on metal plate adjoining pickguard. Chrome knobs with flat tops and knurled sides and black plastic 'Top-Hat' switch tip. Fender combined bridge/tailpiece with three 'threaded' saddles. Complete with the original chrome "ashtray" bridge cover. This guitar is in near mint (9.25) condition. The original thin frets show a little playing wear (mainly on the first seven frets) but have plenty of life left in them. There is some light finish checking, a tiny amount of belt buckle wear on the back (nothing through the finish) and a couple of small surface chips on the top bass edge and also the treble cutatway of the body. The Lake Placid Blue color is bright, fresh and unfaded. This is an exceptional example of a very rare custom-color Telecaster - one of the best we have ever seen. Complete with the original 'Ashtray' bridge cover. Housed in its original Fender black hardshell case with reddish orange plush lining (9.00).

The specifications of the Telecaster were unchanged between late 1965 and late 1967. The only change to the 1964 specification that was made in 1965 was the change of the logo from the 'Spaghetti' version to the 'Transition' one.

"As far as Telecaster guitars are concerned, 1967 may be considered in various respects as a turning point in the CBS versus pre-CBS rhetoric. It is the year when the old 50s style circuit was deleted and replaced by a more classic wiring allowing a two-pickup combination. This point is often overlooked because many players simply clipped (in the 60s or later) the .1 MFD capacitor originally inserted by Leo between the switch and the volume pot. Also Kluson tuners were replaced by Schaller-made Fender keys and a bigger TV conspicuous black logo was ushered in by Fall 1967. Experiments with polyester finishes, more appropriate for mss production, would quickly lead to the discontinuation of the original, yet more unstable and polluting, nitro-cellulose lacquers."
(A.R. Duchossoir. The Fender Telecaster, p.23)