❌SOLD❌ Fender 1952 Telecaster Vintage Series Butterscotch, 1982

Here’s an interesting Fender 1952 Telecaster Vintage Reissue from the original 1982 Vintage Series built in Fullerton, California while CBS still owned the company.

By 1980 Fender was facing serious challenges on several fronts, including ever-improving quality of Japanese copies and demands for increased production coupled with a lack of investment by the parent CBS. A team of employees led by John Page, Freddy Tavares and Paul Bugielski were able to create five guitars – a 52 Tele, 57 and 62 Strats, Precision and Jazz basses – in a new ‘Vintage Series’ that later turned into the ‘American Vintage’ Reissues, or AVRI.

This Fender 1952 Telecaster Reissue is identified on its Certificate of Authenticity as a ‘Vintage Telecaster Guitar’, a replica of a 1952 model. The COA is signed by Bill Schultz.

The Fender 1952 Telecaster Vintage Reissue body is lightweight Ash paired with a one-piece Maple neck having the Walnut insert for the truss rod cavity. The ‘Butterscotch’ finish is very much like the original 1952 models, and is nitrocellulose lacquer. This was the only finish available for the Telecaster reissue. Not long after this guitar was built, Fender started to use Poly base coats with Nitro over top to overcome some of lacquer’s natural shrinkage tendencies. The neck has a medium C-shape, rather than the deep V profile and this was in response to demands at the time. On this guitar, the original neck pickup was replaced with a Seymour Duncan STR-52 model, and the original pickup is in the case.

This early example of Fender 1952 Telecaster Vintage reissue models is in overall good condition and plays well. The nitrocellulose lacquer finish has some natural sinking as mentioned above, and there’s one small pressure mark near the tone control. The headstock has a small hole, between the D and G strings for a previously-installed second string tree.

The original rectangular tweed hard shell case is included and contains the original neck pickup, ashtray bridge cover, strap and Certificate of Authenticity.

Vintage Guitar magazine has a set of articles on the history of Fender’s Vintage Reissues that are well worth the read.