(Serial Number 22600)
Telecasters from the fifties are the Holy Grails of Telecasters – especially black guards – more on that in a minute.
I’d been looking for a maple board fifties Fender Telecaster for some time but hadn’t found quite the right one until this guitar came up, it grabbed me straight away. The problem was that the same day I’d just bought another holy grail guitar, a 1964 Gibson ES335 in cherry red and used all my money up on that purchase.
I couldn’t let this get away so I had to figure out how to afford it, I ended up selling a Fender Stratocaster to be able to buy it. So I bought two of my all time favorite guitars within hours of each other.
Moving forward a couple of years, a very nice early 50s blackguard Telecaster came up for sale at a Sydney guitar store. I thought I’d ‘upgrade’. So, I took my 1956 Telecaster into the store with the intention to ‘trade up’. I plugged in the blackguard telecaster and it sounded fine. I was about to do a deal when I thought I’d give the ’56 a go. The ’56 sounded so much better I decided to keep it! I’m still happy with that decision.
