Fender Custom Shop 60s Tele Aged Olympic White w/ Bigsby (USED, 2019)

Fender built this one for the Custom Shop's 2019 Summer Event, and the spec sheet reads like a wish list.

Take a '60s Telecaster Custom, bind it top and back in parchment, hollow the body and add an f-hole, then mount a Bigsby B-5 onto the top. Fender never really built a guitar like this one in the 1960s - which is exactly why a limited run like this one exists.

The body is two-piece alder, which matters more than it sounds. Most Thinline Teles you come across are ash, and ash gives you that hard upper-midrange snap. Alder sits lower and rounder, and once you chamber it the guitar loses the stiffness that makes a solid Tele feel like it is pushing back at you. Strummed chords bloom instead of clipping. The Journeyman Relic nitro in Aged Olympic White has the finish settled into cream, with light checking, a few honest looking dings, and hardware that looks played rather than beaten.

In our experience, the Bigsby tends to change how you approach the instrument. Telecasters reward attack, and a B-5 rewards restraint, so you end up somewhere between the two: sustained bends that drift, chords that you can lean on at the end of a phrase, a little Bakersfield shimmer on a held note. The relic'd B-5 is the full bridge and tailpiece assembly, not a retrofit, it should be noted.

Under the 4-ply tortoise Thinline pickguard sits a hand-wound Twisted Tele pickup, with its twin in the bridge position. These are not the standard '60s set. Fender voices each position separately, with a taller bobbin in the neck that pulls in some Stratocaster clarity and a bridge unit with more output than a vintage-spec Tele pickup. Wired Fat '50s style, so the tone pot takes its signal from the output of the volume pot and the guitar keeps its top end when you roll the volume back. Knurled chrome knobs, top hat switch tip, three-way blade complete the controls.

The neck is quartersawn maple in a '60 Oval "C," .820" at the first fret and .890" at the twelfth, with a round-lam rosewood board, 9.5" radius, and 21 narrow-tall 6105 frets. Bone nut at 1.650". Vintage tuners with the Fender logo, an American Vintage '56-'58 string tree, and the '59-'63 Telecaster Custom decal under a medium tint lacquer.

Details worth noting: engraved limited edition neck plate, neck pickup mounted to the pickguard in proper Thinline fashion, Custom Shop brown hardshell case with the limited edition certificate.

If you have been circling a Thinline but wanted something warmer than the ash versions, come play this one. We are happy to chat with you about it if you are shopping from a distance.