Found during a house renovation, this guitar is a classic example of Fender’s prized blackguard gems.
Leo Fender’s efforts to create a professional solidbody guitar began in the late 1940s and resulted in the one-pickup Esquire and the two-pickup Broadcaster in 1950. By the end of 1951, the two-pickup guitar was renamed the Telecaster, due to a name conflict with Gretsch’s Broadkaster drum set. As we all know, today the Telecaster continues to be a versatile tool for amateur and professional musicians.
The Telecaster featured in this article almost didn’t survive 2022. Earlier this year, two brothers with a house-flipping business were clearing a home of debris and getting it ready to renovate. One of the brothers was about to toss a dirty wooden object he had found in a closet into the dumpster. The other brother realized it was an electric guitar. Fortunately, he decided it would be a good idea to have the caseless, dirty, beat-up instrument appraised. By doing this, he saved an original 1952 Fender Telecaster from being destroyed!
The cleaned and detailed headstock of this guitar boasts Kluson tuners and a round string tree.
That 1952 Telecaster has TG-6-6-52 penciled on the end of its neck, indicating employee Tadeo Gomez completed it in June of 1952. The date penciled in the neck pocket area of the body is 6-3-52. The guitar has the classic characteristics of a 1952 Tele, including a transparent butterscotch blonde finish over an ash body, a single-ply black phenolite (also known as Bakelite) pickguard—making it a so-called blackguard Tele, a bridge pickup with level pole pieces (Fender moved to staggered pole pieces during 1955), and a 3-way switch.
The current value for one in excellent all-original condition is $40,000.
At the time this guitar was built, Fender’s wiring scheme activated the bridge pickup in the number 1 position, the neck pickup in number 2, and with the selector all the way up in position 3, the signal runs through a capacitor that adds bass. Remember, back in those days a single guitarist often played bass lines as well as chords, melodies, and solos in many bands. The P bass was introduced only a year before this guitar was made and was a new instrument still trying to find its place in the music world.
This instrument has a through-body bridge, three adjustable bridge pieces, and a pickup that looks like a relic, but sounds like a dream.
The 1-piece maple neck has narrow-spaced position markers at the 12th fret (the dot spacing became wider between 1953 and 1963), a round string tree (which went rectangular in 1956), and Kluson “no brand” tuners. The tuners were stamped with “Kluson Deluxe” in a single line by 1957. The 1952 list price was $189.50. The current value for one in excellent all-original condition is $40,000.
It’s unclear who the “Davis” is that signed this neck pocket in 1952. Famed Fender employee Charlie Davis didn’t start at the Fullerton plant until 1957.
The amp supporting the Tele is a wide-panel Fender Pro from 1953. It’s equipped with a Jensen P15N 15" speaker, dated to the 20th week of 1953, and powered by two 6L6 tubes capable of about 18 to 25 watts of power. Two inputs are controlled by a mic volume knob, and two inputs are controlled by an instrument volume knob. In addition to the on/off switch, this amp is equipped with a standby. The 1953 list price was $199.50. The current value for the amp is $3,500.
Sources for this article include The Blackguard by Nacho Baños, The Pinecaster by Nacho Baños and Lynn Wheelwright, The Fender Telecaster by A.R. Duchossoir, and Fender Amps: The First Fifty Years by John Teagle and John Sprung.For his farewell column, Richie Owens tells the story of his dad’s exceptional Fender, from arrival to unsavory departure to return.
This is my last Vintage Vault column, so I want to finish with a story about a guitar near and dear to my heart: my father’s 1960 Fender Custom Telecaster.
The Fender Custom Telecaster was first offered at the NAMM show in 1959, and its initial full year of production was 1960. It came with an ash body, a maple neck, and Fender’s famed slab-rosewood fretboard, which is considered very desirable. This fretboard was only available from 1958 to August 1962. Sunburst was the model’s original standard finish, but other colors were also available, and my dad’s came in red with white binding.
My father, Louis Owens, purchased his 1960 Custom Tele in 1962 from a friend who needed cash to pay his family’s bills, for the princely sum of $75. The instrument had a slight burn mark on the front of the body that made it identifiable. (This is what we call foreshadowing.) Oddly, the last of its six Kluson tuners was plastic instead of metal, but it had a chrome coating.
When Louis Owens purchased this guitar in 1962, it had a red finish with white binding. After it returned to our columnist, it was given a facelift in tobacco burst, a new bridge, and rope-style binding.
This guitar floated around my house, mostly unused, for years until I got interested in playing electric guitar as a teen. But at that age, I wanted something more rock ’n’ roll looking, so I went to a music store here in Nashville, where I saw a low-priced Les Paul I was interested in trying. The store wanted some collateral to let me take the guitar home to try it, so I brought the Tele in for them to hold while I tried the Les Paul out for the weekend. (You might see where this is going.)
I was so upset by this rip-off that I told all my friends at other music stores in town about what had happened and gave them all the serial number of the Tele.
I didn’t like that Les Paul, so I brought it back on Monday to get my Telecaster back. They informed me that wasn’t the deal: It was a swap, and they had already sold my guitar. Of course, I was devastated, and being young and inexperienced I just accepted that the guitar was gone. I walked away like a safe was on my shoulders. I was so upset by this rip-off that I told all my friends at other music stores in town about what had happened and gave them all the serial number of the Tele.
A marker of this guitar’s rarity is the location of the serial number, stamped at the bottom of the neck-joint cover. It is among the first 25 examples of this model ever made.
Fast-forward 11 years. I got a call from a friend that worked at Gruhn Guitars who said he believed he’d found my dad’s Telecaster. I went down to the shop to verify the guitar, and sure enough it was my dad’s 1960 Custom. Unfortunately, the guitar had already been sold. It made me very sad to get that close, but Gruhn’s told me they would give the buyer my information and explain what had happened in case he ever wanted to sell it. About six months passed, and I got a call from the buyer. He’d found a 1952 Fender Telecaster he was interested in and wanted to sell me the 1960. He even offered it to me for $1,000 less than what he paid, so he could quickly get money to buy that ’52 Tele. I immediately reached out to family members to put the money together to get the guitar back, and it was soon mine again.
Some years later, I went to work for Gibson in California as the product specialist and development manager for the Dobro guitar company, which they’d purchased. The Fender Custom Shop was just down the road, and we occasionally swapped parts for different projects. (They were trying to make Telecaster-style resonator guitars.) I became friends with Fred Stuart, one of the master luthiers at the Custom Shop. He had just done his now-famous herringbone Telecaster and was looking for other types of binding. Dobro had moved into using rope binding, in the style of Weissenborn guitars from the 1920s, and Fred wanted some. So, I asked him if he’d help restore my dad's Custom Telecaster, which had a lot of wear.
The 61-year-old pickups on this Tele have produced tones for Vince Gill, Albert Lee, and James Burton, and appeared on various recordings by Richie Owens and the Farm Bureau.
Since he was interested in rope binding for Telecasters, we decided to do it to my guitar. We changed the finish to a tobacco burst, which was painted at the Dobro factory to save money. Fred also did some research on the guitar, which has its serial number stamped on the bottom of the plate. That’s rare—only a very few Fender Custom Telecasters made in late 1959 and early 1960 have this. He found it was one of the first 25. He also put new-old-stock pots in, replacing the scratchy originals, and added a better-intonated Danny Gatton 3-piece bridge. We also added an NOS headstock logo.
The results were amazing, and I’ve been lucky to have three of my Tele heroes—James Burton, Albert Lee, and Vince Gill—say it’s one of the best Telecasters they’ve ever played, with lots of clarity, definition, snap, and gorgeous midrange. I will never part with this guitar, accidentally or on purpose, again—even though I’ve seen 1960 Custom Teles listed for more than $30,000 and much higher.
Thanks for sharing this column with me. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my 6-string stories as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them.