1973 Fender® Telecaster® Custom

$3,499.99

  • Year: 1973
  • Manufacturer: Fender®
  • Model: Telecaster® Custom
  • Case: Original Hard
  • Color: Black
  • Condition: Very Good
  • Description: Here is a fantastic all-original Vintage 1973 Fender® Telecaster® Custom Guitar made in Fullerton California at the original Fender® factory. The instrument is in excellent plus condition and is really a iconic tonal monster and a wonderful clean example. This was Seth Lover's humbucking answer to the Gibson popular tone and these early examples are stunning in their great craftsmanship, killer looks, fantastic playability, and thunderous tone and fame in the hands of guys like Keith Richards who played one exactly like this for many years on stage and in the studio! This one's a super clean all-original very nice example from the original owner who took great care with the instrument and she only shows some light fret and board wear in the cowboy chord positions but is in exceptional clean excellent plus condition throughout with her original Fender® injection hardcase. The deep black finish is wonderful with only some very light rim wear on the armpit and bottom bout where she rubs the case and only lightly worn down to the base coat and not through to the wood at all. The owner did fit the guitar with a brass nut back in the Bronze age but the resultant twang and roar is simply awesome to behold. Plugged in to a good Fender® or Marshall tube amp, you might just think the heavens had opened up and God had spoken! You won't be regretting your purchase when you crack the case on this baby - you'll undoubtedly finally understand what all the fuss was about these guitars as the years have illuminated just how brilliant they play and sound!! History During the 1950s and early 1960s Fender®'s twangy single-coil sound enjoyed considerable popularity. This began to wane by the mid-1960s as new stars like Eric Clapton and Mike Bloomfield plugged their humbucker-equipped Gibsons into over-driven Marshall amps. Many players began to look for a thicker, creamier sound that the standard Telecaster® didn't deliver. To achieve this sound, many players replaced the standard single coil pickups on their Telecasters and installed aftermarket humbuckers (a good example of this is Andy Summers' modified Telecaster). Another reason for replacing the Tele® neck pickup was that many players felt it lacked a "Rock and Roll vibe". The original single coil neck pickup excels in jazz and blues tones but players felt replacing it with a more powerful humbucker pickup would give the Telecaster® a second rock voice to match the Tele®'s popular bridge pickup. The Telecaster® Custom (along with the Thinline and Deluxe models) was an attempt to enter the humbucker market largely dominated by Gibson. Fender®'s first humbucking design was the wide range humbucker created by Seth Lover, who had overseen the development of the original Gibson humbucker. When Lover's association with Gibson came to an end Fender® approached him to design a pick-up which would enable them to compete with his previous employer. The resulting pick-up first appeared in the Thinline and Deluxe range of Fender® Telecasters introduced in 1972. Lover's Fender® humbucker is felt by many to be brighter with more bottom end than his Gibson versions, and a better match for the classic Fender® bridge pickup. The original Telecaster® Custom was in production from 1972 until 1981, sporting a curly "Custom" logo (until early 1973, when the "Custom" logo was updated to the standard italicized block typeface used on most Fender® guitars and basses of the period) and "Witch-Hat" volume and tone knobs until the first half of 1977, when the knobs changed to Stratocaster® types. Fender used denser wood for this model, resulting in a significantly heavier instrument (nine lbs versus the average Tele®'s seven) with inherently greater sustain. The resulting sound is much thicker and less sharply defined. Though the Telecaster® Custom was in production for only 8 years, many felt it was the perfect combination of the Fender® and Gibson sounds. Few well-known players of the time picked up on the Tele® Custom apart from Keith Richards, who used a couple alongside his modified Gibson humbucker-equipped Teles and Mick Green (guitarist for The Pirates, Johnny Kidd, Bryan Ferry, Van Morrison and Paul McCartney) who wielded a natural-finish 'second-version' Custom. Popularity The Tele® Custom was introduced just around the time that Fender® began to lose its reputation as a quality instrument company. Blighted with Fender®'s allegedly unstable 3 bolt adjustable neck joint and the characteristic 1970's-style "notchless" upper cutaway, the Custom was also tarnished by negative perceptions surrounding the Pre / Post-CBS quality control debate. Were this not enough, the Custom was also more expensive than the standard Tele®. Despite high hopes, sales never reached the levels that Fender® had anticipated. Contact us to request additional pictures, set up a Skype session, or if you have any questions about the item, shipping, or payment!