Fender Custom Shop 1962 Style Blonde Tolex Vintage Case Included!

Although no two are ever made exactly the same, my "Voodoo Lounge" configuration upgraded Telecasters always sell quickly. Here is a truly magnificent butterscotch blonde "Double Fat" (HH) Telecaster. This guitar began life as a 2006 Fender USA Telecaster. It has undergone a number of changes using only Fender USA, Seymour Duncan, and Fender-licensed parts. So this is an auction for the resale of a previously owned (but unused) guitar with changes and upgrades. I am sure that the good people of Fender Musical Instruments would want you to know that this guitar does not come with a warranty from Fender, since it is previously-owned (although unused) and has been "repaired" with an amazing set of upgrades.

Now that the disclaimers are out of the way, this is a really fine guitar for the player who is looking for quality, value, and a mountain of tone and playability. Before moving on, just one more warning and an apology. I have included many high resolution images in this description, and if you are on a dial-up Internet connection it is going take some time for all of them to load. I apologize for that, but if you'll kindly be patient and allow them to pop into view, I think you'll agree that seeing the photographs will be very worthwhile.

Lots of people love the look of the famous 1952 Telecasters and wish that Fender would offer that look on Tele's with more modern features than one finds on the 52 Reissue. Lots of people also love the special look and sound of the the legendary Tele owned by Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones -which he named Micawber- that features an old Gibson "PAF" humbucker in the neck position.

This Telecaster will satisfy all of those desires, and more! The beautiful guitar has been carefully thought out and lovingly restored from the very finest genuine Fender USA and Fender-Licensed components. The work was just been completed by me in May, 2006, a few days prior to the beginning of this auction.

Let's take a tour of this very special musician's guitar:

The foundation of this Telecaster is a brand new solid southern swamp ash Telecaster body.

This is among the very best and most beautiful Telecaster bodies I have ever seen. It was produced under Fender license by the wizards at the justly revered Warmoth custom shop. The quality of Ken Warmoth's Fender-licensed custom built pieces is simply on a higher plane, both for the select woods he uses, as well as the careful and expert craftsmanship carried on in his shop.

I told my friends at Warmoth that I wanted a Telecaster body made from Southern swamp ash. In that species of ash, the portion of the tree that is suitable for premium quality lightweight guitar wood is actually submerged under water for years, which yields a porous and gloriously light wood. This premium species of ash delivers both a deep low-end and crisp, bell-like highs. Swamp Ash is what Leo Fender originally used for the earliest (and best) Telecasters he built in the 1950's, and today it shows up only rarely in Fender's best solid-bodied electrics. Swamp ash is the mother-of-all woods when it comes to tone for the Fender Telecaster model.

The best pieces of swamp ash are porous and light, which adds to the natural resonance of the wood. This body is a particularly fine example of the finest ultra-light swamp ash...the complete guitar weighs just 7 pounds & 9.5 ounces!

I told Warmoth that the body should be routed for a humbucker at the neck, and expertly stained and clear coated at Warmoth in a transparent butterscotch blonde stain with a beautiful glass-like clear coat. This gorgeous finish brings out all of the highlights in the rich figuring of the grain in the select swamp ash. Warmoth's butterscotch blonde is less yellow than the finish on Fender's reissues, and to my eyes it is far more beautiful (more "scotch" in the butter!).

Isn't that butterscotch blonde beautiful over the grain? This custom-made Telecaster body is just out of this world. It rings like a bell. It feels alive against your body as you play, and it sounds good even when you are unplugged. And it is an absolutely beautiful piece of wood, true eye candy for anyone that loves the look of classic swamp ash -- the mother-of-all wood for Telecasters.

The beautiful body is topped with a custom-cut vintage style black matte single ply pickguard.

Now let's talk about pickups and electronics.

The bridge pickup is a Seymour Duncan Vintage Stack. The V-stack spits out the trademark twangy Tele leads with the most perfect 50's style vintage Tele single coil tone in the known universe -- but guess what? It isn't really a single coil. This amazing Duncan pickup utilizes a stacked pole arrangement to create a noise-free humbucker that looks and sounds like a single coil, but without the noise. It features characteristic vintage Tele lead pickup construction, including old school waxed yarn wrapping and a copper clad steel base plate.

And what about that Humbucker in the neck position? This is the only and only Lindy Fralin hand-made PAF style humbucking pickup.

The Fralin humbucker is 100% hand crafted and hand-wound using the traditional methods and materials employed by Seth Lover and others at Gibson in the 1950's for Gibson's original pre-patent humbuckers. Lindy uses 42 plain enamel wire in the wind, just like the original Gibson pickup. The cover on the pickup is heavy silver nickel, and the whole package has the unmistakable look and hefty feel of quality and authenticity. And the tone is just killer: fat and creamy, and ready for anything from crunchy rock and blues, to searing distortion, to smooth jazz. The pickup I selected for this guitar is wound ever-so-slightly hotter than the Duncan Antiquity pickups I often use in my "Voodoo" Teles, and it shows an output of 8k on the bench, balancing perfectly with the hot vintage stack at the bridge. This is a very potent and versatile humbucker, and you will love the sounds you'll be hearing from the neck position on this Butterscotch beauty.

This Lindy Fralin and Vintage Stack pickup combination has simply INCREDIBLE tone. Whether you play country twang, Keith Richards crunch, or take your Tele into blues, jazz or hard rock, this guitar will fly you to the friendly skies of tone with a seat in the first class cabin.

Consistent with the top quality of these pickups, the controls are equally first rate. The switch is a genuine USA CRL 3 way switch. The CRL switch has a real coil spring, just as they did in the 50's and 60's. Most newer Fenders use a cheaper form of switch, one that does not have the same positive contact, and the same satisfying feel of the click, that these more expensive and durable old-school CRL switches have. The control wiring is neat and tidy, as you'd expect from Pat's Guitars, using high quality vintage style cloth covered push back wire, just like the kind that was used in Leo Fender's day. The volume and tone controls are genuine USA CTS 500K control pots with a real SPRAGUE "Orange Drop" .022 microfarad tone capacitor. The control knobs are genuine American Deluxe"flat-top" Tele knobs, made by Fender USA.

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Also please note that I have completed the control harness with the perfect finishing touch: my very popular resistor-capacitor volume kit. If you have a good ear, you have probably noticed that when you roll off the volume control on a guitar your tone changes. There is a minor but significant treble roll-off that occurs along with the volume roll-off. Although the treble cut in the volume control is not nearly as steep as the treble roll-off that occurs with your tone control, it is still strong enough to annoy any player who makes much use of the volume control on his or her guitar. The treble loss problem is solved on this Telecaster, thanks to a 680pf capacitor and a 220K resistor wired together to the volume pot, which work to eliminate the usual loss of high frequencies at lower volume settings. Finally your volume control will only cut your volume, it will not cut your highs as well!

A weak spot in many Telecasters is the jack design, Tele jacks tend to get loose and noisy with the passage of time. There is only one solution that works, and this guitar has it. The patented "electro-socket" jack assembly. This jack is the only one that anchors securely directly to the body, and will not wiggle or come loose over time. Your cable snaps in with a solid and satisfying click, then stays rigid in the jack. No more static and noise. The electro-socket has that special look of quality too, with its "bowl-shaped" rather than "cup-shaped" contours. The jack itself is a military spec Switchcraft USA part -- again, only the very best.

What about the neck?

The neck is a brand new (old stock, but never used) Fender USA 2006 Telecaster neck. The neck is crafted from a single piece of maple (no laminated separate fretboard). It features beautifully figured grain, and a gorgeous satiny-smooth real lacquer finish with a light vintage tint. The tint is just the right coloration for the transition from the Butterscotch Blonde body. And look ... there are even sweet hints of flame figure running along the treble side of the back of the neck!

This neck is a very special combination of vintage "mojo" and the advanced features that modern players need. The neck has the classic headstock logo and round string tree of the 52 Reissue together with the same vintage Kluson-style tuners, to give a correct 1952 appearance.

But appearances can be deceiving, because the construction of this neck is thoroughly modern. It has the Fender bi-flex truss rod system, with a convenient adjustment at the headstock.

Instead of the skinny frets and the round 7.25" fingerboard radius of the vintage reissues, this guitar has the tall medium-jumbo frets (Dunlop 6105 fretwire) and a flatter 12" fretboard radius, so this guitar will allow long, buttery string bends, and low buzz-free action. The neck has Fender's best fret and nut work, with rolled fretboard edges for that comfortable broken-in feeling, and a comfortable medium C shaped back profile. The bigger frets, the flatter radius, and the vintage appearance, are all very much like the strategy you'll find on Fender's popular new Eric Johnson Stratocaster, but this Voodoo Lounge Tele also gives you the advantage of a fast and comfortable light satin lacquer finish in place of the rather "sticky" gloss finish uses on the EJ Strat necks. This beautiful maple neck is a player's dream come true,

The neck was built by Fender in February 2006, for a guitar assembled in March, and the neck has had zero hours of use.

The neck attaches to the body with a beautiful genuine Fender "Corona, California" engraved chrome neck plate.

The Tele definitely has it all and will give you a "bigger bang" for your buck. This guitar has all of the virtues of the great Teles of the 1950's through the middle 1960's, mixed with some terrific modern enhancements like strap locks, the updated jack design, not to mention the state-of-the-art body and finish work. It really is difficult to stop looking at this guitar, especially the absolutely entrancing butterscotch over ash body. I know it is a cliché to make the following two statements in an eBay guitar description, but this instrument truly does "play like butter," and the pictures truly "do not do it any justice." If you think it looks nice in the photos, wait till you see it in "real life." It is a very special guitar that shows excellence in every aspect.

Who are those guys, anyway?... Back to business-

The greatest guitars deserve only the best in protection and so this guitar will come to the winner in a genuine Fender Custom Shop G & G 1962 style Blonde Tolex plush-lined hardshell case. The case has bound leather ends with white piping and locking hardware. This is in my opinion one of the most handsome of all the G & G made for Leo Fender! You also get owner's literature from Fender and Warmoth, a Fender polishing cloth, all the original retail hang tags, all the original Seymour Duncan paperwork and packaging, a bridge saddle height adjustment wrench, and more. The guitar is strung with a fresh set of D'Addario .010 - .046 nickel wound strings, and it is beautifully set up by Pat's Guitars with low easy action and perfect intonation. All this guitar needs now is a happy new owner, LIKE YOU!

Any imperfections? None...it is perfect and pristine, everything is new, it is perfection!

This guitar is priced at an extremely reasonable level, in consideration of the quality of the instrument and its various components, and in light of the skill, effort, and expense that went into this project. If you have always wanted an optimized Keef style Telecaster from Pat's Guitars, this is the time to act! This "Voodoo Lounge Edition Telecaster" is a hand-assembled labor of love, offered at a terrific price. Every inch of this Tele is in beautiful brand new condition.

Where else can you buy a Fender USA Tele:

with a custom-built solid swamp ash butterscotch contoured body?

also with the "vintage-modern" neck, tuners, and bridge combination?

also with the superb autographed Fralin PAF & Duncan Vintage Stack pickup array?

also with the hand wired premium control layout using vintage cloth wire, and the electro-socket?

and also with the rare Fender Custom Shop Blonde case?

So like I said at the outset: This is a previously owned (though unused) guitar with upgrades. I am sure that the good people of Fender Musical Instruments would want you to understand that this guitar does not come with any warranty from Fender, since it is now previously owned (by me) and has been "repaired" and restored to a configuration that brings it to a much higher level of excellence.

However, this is not some "Franken-Tele" thrown together from left-over parts, by some person who works all day changing oil at the Quicky-Lube, and who then returns home to the trailer park and spends the evening screwing mis-matched guitar parts together for fun and profit. Unfortunately, there are a LOT of those amateur-made mutant "parts guitars" roaming the back alleys on eBay (and many of the mutant sellers seem to like to mimic my designs, my presentation style, and even my fonts, phrases, and camera angles, ~ one of these wanna-be/mini-me characters has so little self-respect that he even copies my "About Me" page...this poor simian evidently can't even describe himself without copying someone else!). So be careful, compare feature-to-feature, and don't get confused or misled by a copycat, because the amateur builders that sell these mutant parts guitars on eBay often can't distinguish their frets from their nuts ~ if you know what I mean!

This beautiful Voodoo Lounge Edition Telecaster is something else completely.

This is a tastefully restored and upgraded guitar, made using ONLY the highest quality authentic Fender USA, Lindy Fralin, Seymour Duncan and Fender-licensed Custom Made elements, which compliment each other in complete harmony, and which together result in a guitar that is unique (and to many eyes so much finer) than any mass produced corporate product. Most importantly, the construction was carried out by a respected professional who operates a legitimate full-service guitar business.

I am a professional who sells only the best, and I care about my customers' happiness. My PayPal-verified business is proud to hold the SquareTrade Seal. The Seal stands as more evidence, along with my excellent feedback and constant repeat business, of my complete commitment to ethics and honesty in online sales.

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PRICE AS CONFIGURED: $1,899.00

SOME ELEMENTS MAY VARY

POPULAR VARIATIONS:

AUTOGRAPHED DUNCAN ANTIQUITY HUMBUCKER (my favorite & no extra charge):