Fender Custom Shop 1950s "Linhof" Telecaster w/Fralins Butterscotch/Journeyman

A Fender Custom Shop take on the Linhof T-style, with a flipped Fralin Blues Special in the bridge, a Fralin P92 in the neck, and a mahogany body in aged butterscotch.

We’ve been fascinated by Linhof T-style guitars for a long time. Kurt Linhof designed the original, and JW Black built them until Kurt passed away in 2014, with only around 150 or so ever made. Our first run in this style came from Don Grosh, and for this one we brought the idea to the Fender Custom Shop.

The design has a few signature touches, and the most interesting is the flipped bridge pickup. There are plenty of theories about where that idea came from, and a popular one traces it back to Jimi Hendrix playing a right-handed Strat flipped over to lefty, which reversed the slant of his bridge pickup and may be part of why those guitars sounded the way they did. Whatever its origins, the idea makes a lot of sense: flipping the pickup moves it farther from the bridge under the treble strings, which takes the edge off the icepick bite a Tele bridge pickup can have, and closer to the bridge under the bass strings, which adds clarity and snap to the low end. In practice that’s exactly what happens, and the result still sounds like a Telecaster, just sweeter and fuller.

In the neck position is a Lindy Fralin P92, a P-90-style pickup in a humbucker-sized housing that delivers a thick, warm voice with more bite and character than a typical humbucker. It’s paired with a Fralin Blues Special in that flipped bridge slot for a slightly fuller, rounder take on classic Tele snap, and the two make a really musical combination that we had a blast exploring.

The body in this one is mahogany with a fantastic looking Butterscotch finish. Journeyman-level aging adds just enough wear to make it feel broken in from day one, like it has already played a few hundred gigs and liked every one of them. The neck is carved to Fender’s 11/56 offset V profile, a really comfortable shape that reminds us quite a bit of the feel of a vintage ’60s Telecaster.

Put it all together and you get a guitar that looks the part, sounds sweeter and fuller than a standard Tele without losing any of what makes one great, and feels alive and resonant in your hands.