This is a 1968 Fender Tele with a rare maple cap neck. All of the late 60s(1967-1969) left handed Teles I’ve sold have had a rosewood fingerboard. Even most right handed late 60s Teles have the rosewood fingerboard. I was able to find a pristine right handed 1966 Tele with a maple cap neck that I sold to Joe Bonamassa earlier in the year: http://www.leftyvintageguitars.com/1966FenderTeleMapleCap.html
This is a player’s guitar, with many non-original parts. But it’s priced at about 1/3 of an all original late 60s left handed Tele with a rosewood fingerboard. The prize is clearly the factory left handed maple cap neck, dated 3SEP68, so the rest of the guitar is just icing on the cake.
Here’s a rundown of what’s original and what’s non-original:
Original: Body, Maple Cap Neck, Frets, Neck Plate, Bridge Pickup(with added lead wires), Volume Knob, Strap Knobs, Jack Cup.
Non-Original: Tuning Gears(includes extra set of tuners in the case), string tree, pickguard, neck pickup, pots, cap, 3-way switch, bridge.
On the body, the finish appears to be stripped down to the sealer. There is a battery hole that was used for a preamp and is now filled with non matching wood and oversprayed. The body has also been routed for a humbucker in the neck PUP cavity.
On the neck, there are some extra holes from some different tuners that were on at one time. There is also a filled extra string tree hole. The neck has the original frets and is in really nice shape. The plain black Fender logo on the headstock is typical of 68-69 Teles I’ve owned.
The guitar has that perfect Strat/Tele weight of 7.5 lbs. The case is a newer Fender hard shell case.
The guitar has been professionally inspected and perfectly set-up by Scott Freilich of Top Shelf Music. The guitar plays and sounds great. This is a nice and cool-looking player’s vintage Tele with the highly desirable and rare maple cap neck, priced less than a new(and unremarkable) Fender Custom Shop Tele, and priced at a fraction of a fully original late 1960s Tele!
