NGD - Fender Japan '62 Reissue Custom Telecaster

[mgeek]

There's an anecdote from the concierge at Chelsea Cloisters in one of the Barrett biographies about Syd giving him lots of stuff including groovy Granny takes A Trip-type threads and "expensive guitars. Fenders". All that is certain is that Syd parted company with his at some point, which begs the question: who's got it now? You would think it's still out there, somewhere, though it could have been parted out.

Yeah I remember reading that...was the guys name...Ronnie Salmon? I think I saw Twink say somewhere that he was still using a Tele when he was back in Cambridge playing with Stars so guess he gave it away sometime after 74'

Due to it's rarity, if it DID turn up it'd be much easier to id as his than just some random tele...even 'black in the cavities showing that was the original colour/being in the UK' would start ringing bells that it might be this. Any ideas how many were originally made in that colour scheme?

Crazy also to think that the mirror esquire is out there too, almost certainly minus the mirrors!

[marqueemoon]

There was a red one of those for sale locally. One of the best Teles I’ve ever played.

Those tuners are

My Kubicki Strat has black Klusons and gold hardware elsewhere. Pretty gross, but it was the early 90’s.

[fuzzjunkie]

Is it certain that Syd’s Telecaster was black? I’ve only ever seen this picture of it, and of course, more often, the Esquire.

The reason I ask is that for years I craved a “black” Gretsch hollowbody like George Harrison’s. His Duojet was indeed black, but the Country Gent was walnut.

I also chased Will Sargent’s Fender Jaguar for years. From a black and white photo I thought it was Sonic Blue, or maybe Surf Green. I had a Surf Green ‘63 Jaguar for 5 years until I got a chance to ask him and found out the guitar in question not only wasn’t his, borrowed from a friend, but wasn’t either of the colors I suspected. It was a faded Fiesta Red! Or “Salmon pink” as he called it.

Incidentally Will is a Syd fan and his main Telecaster is black with a maple neck.

Black wasn’t a popular custom color in the early ‘60s. Any chance it’s LPB or some other dark color? I have seen a few CAR double bound Telecasters from this era, and 1-2 LPB. Maybe a Sherwood Green, but the black ones were all refinished, like the 1961 that I have.

[fuzzjunkie]

Never mind. I found this post and a color photo. It is indeed black, but it says that it’s probably a ‘67-69 model. That makes more sense.

http://sydbarrettgear.blogspot.com/200 ... r.html?m=1

[UlricvonCatalyst]

Sure looks black to me.

[mgeek]

Here's another black one... but with a rosewood fretboard and a factory bigsby

https://www.southsideguitars.com/listin ... k/17202675

and one on pinterest with not much info that purports to be a maple cap black '68 custom

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/533465518341428351/

I bet if factory records were available it'd turn out a veeeeery small number were made to that exact spec.

[UlricvonCatalyst]

Yeah, I'd worked out its lineage, or rather someone else did, and I took their word for it. The maple board Custom Teles were a relatively short-lived range, but I've never read any suggestion that Syd's was a refin (which doesn't mean it wasn't, of course), but any Fender colour could've been ordered from the custom shop at the time. As mgeek says, that guitar would almost certainly be immediately identifiable as Syd's if it hasn't died in a fire.

Being a '62 reissue, mine has no real connection with the one Syd (apparently) traded his mirrored Esquire for, which is said to have been second-hand when he got it. How many black ones were sold, and who had it before and after him remain a mystery at this point. And, although the maple board Teles were a thing in the late sixties, who's to say that Syd's second-hand Custom wasn't an early Partscaster?

Interesting to note on the colour pictures above, is that the Madcap Laughs floorboards were still a work in progress on the day of the 'Syd in his underpants' photo shoot, so he definitely had the guitar prior to the album cover shoot, sometime in 1969, and it's generally supposed to be the one he used on those sessions.

mgeek - I recently stayed up way past my bedtime on a work day reading an annoyingly fractured account of the history of his Olympia gig with Gilmour on bass, and Stars* with too many asides about what his ex-bandmates were up to throughout the same period. I'd need to read it again to be sure, but I don't remember Twink saying which Tele Syd played at that point. According to the other 'Syd's guitars' link, he lent his white Tele to Gilmour as a tour back-up, but he may well have got it back from him and used that one, or another one altogether (I got the impression from Ronnie Salmon's account that he may have had several).



* The link doesn't seem to work within OSG, but if you're interested you can find it by googling "men on the border stars".

[UlricvonCatalyst]

While conducting my search for a double-bound black Tele within the last couple of weeks, I came across one from the late sixties for sale in the USA. I can't remember if it had a maple or rosewood board, though. Hard to say if Syd's was the only one that ever left the factory with that exact spec (I think I investigated the pinterest one and found it wasn't actually a Fender).

[UlricvonCatalyst]

Wouldn't it be cool if this thread leads to the discovery of either the Custom Tele or the Esquire? It'd be like the Lee Ranaldo incident all over again!

[mgeek]

It would!

Makes sense that the pinterest one isn't og... looks a bit shiny! Interesting isn't it that we can't even find one genuine pic of another to the same spec

I think Twink might have mentioned it being a Tele on an instagram comment maybe? In that one pic of Syd at a stars gig the headstock looks kinda Vox Phantomish, so I think I asked if it was and he said no.

[mgeek]

I wonder if Syd bought it off Simon Nicol, or if a couple to this spec were imported

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxEpR2GViBc

(good shot at about 7 mins in)

[UlricvonCatalyst]

I wonder if Syd bought it off Simon Nicol, or if a couple to this spec were imported

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxEpR2GViBc

(good shot at about 7 mins in)

Gosh, I've seen that clip before, but somehow the Syd-spec Tele didn't register. I'm pretty sure I read that Syd bought his from a music shop in London, trading in his Esquire, but who knows if that info is correct; if it is, it's not impossible that it could be the same guitar Simon Nicol briefly owned. Then again, it's equally possible that more than one of those custom coloured Customs found its way to the UK in that late '60s period.

It didn't occur to me at the time, but I went to the Rip It Up exhibition, and the star attraction for me was Hamish Stuart's double-bound Tele:



It's hard to tell from the picture, but I'm sure it had a humbucker in the neck; there was certainly something about it that made me think almost, but not quite - maybe it was just the scratchplate. It'd be far out indeed if that guitar had passed from Nicol to Barrett to Stuart, but it's hard to imagine him changing the white scratchplate for a tomato tort one prior to the pick-up swap (if it actually happened). So now we possibly have a third black Custom Tele in the UK. Maybe they're not all that uncommon after all.

On a side note, I had assumed Syd's Tele would have had F tuners, but in this brief shot of the Fairport Tele, it looks like that one, at least, had normal Klusons. My F tuners and neck arrived on Saturday, so I guess I'll just stick with those.

[UlricvonCatalyst]

I think Twink might have mentioned it being a Tele on an instagram comment maybe? In that one pic of Syd at a stars gig the headstock looks kinda Vox Phantomish, so I think I asked if it was and he said no.

Probably just the angle of the shot. I actually wouldn't have believed the guy in the picture is Syd if it didn't come from a reliable source (such as a known acid head, many years after the fact )

[mgeek]

Gosh, I've seen that clip before, but somehow the Syd-spec Tele didn't register. I'm pretty sure I read that Syd bought his from a music shop in London, trading in his Esquire, but who knows if that info is correct; if it is, it's not impossible that it could be the same guitar Simon Nicol briefly owned. Then again, it's equally possible that more than one of those custom coloured Customs found its way to the UK in that late '60s period.

It didn't occur to me at the time, but I went to the Rip It Up exhibition, and the star attraction for me was Hamish Stuart's double-bound Tele:



It's hard to tell from the picture, but I'm sure it had a humbucker in the neck; there was certainly something about it that made me think almost, but not quite - maybe it was just the scratchplate. It'd be far out indeed if that guitar had passed from Nicol to Barrett to Stuart, but it's hard to imagine him changing the white scratchplate for a tomato tort one prior to the pick-up swap (if it actually happened). So now we possibly have a third black Custom Tele in the UK. Maybe they're not all that uncommon after all.

On a side note, I had assumed Syd's Tele would have had F tuners, but in this brief shot of the Fairport Tele, it looks like that one, at least, had normal Klusons. My F tuners and neck arrived on Saturday, so I guess I'll just stick with those.

Wow! Just the other day I was thinking how I'd never seen another to that spec, and now there are possibly three... I met Hamish Stuart backstage at a festival a couple of years ago, wish I'd been able to quiz him about this then!

i suppose if Fender were doing some black customs it would have been a batch so it's quite possible that these are different guitars, but at the same time all the bands were in and out of the shops around Denmark Street back then, so if Simon Nicol didn't get on with it, and sold it, it's very possible that Syd would have seen it when out shopping for a guitar.

The first pics of Syd with it seem to be vague 'spring '68' http://www.sydbarrett.com/photos/solo-p ... 1]/NG/1943

The Fairport footage is april 27th '68, so pushing it a bit, but not impossible. Either way I bet they had the same neck dates!

[UlricvonCatalyst]

The first pics of Syd with it seem to be vague 'spring '68' http://www.sydbarrett.com/photos/solo-p ... 1]/NG/1943

I'd always assumed those pictures were also by Mick Rock for some reason. Not sure the 'Spring '68' designation can be taken as gospel, despite being from the official Syd site. I wonder what publication, if any, they were taken for.