Imagine a solidbody electric guitar with all the comfort of a great broken-in vintage instrument, but with modern appointments aimed at giving you the best possible playing experience. That's what you're going to get with the Fender Custom Shop 1952 Time Machine Heavy Relic Telecaster. And spec'd with a pair of handwound Custom Shop Loaded Nocaster pickups, this axe delivers the legendary twang and bite old Teles are famous for. At Sweetwater, we've been fans of the Fender Custom Shop for quite a while. Fender's elite luthiers produce outstanding instruments with premium features and appointments. Judging from how incredible this '52 Heavy Tele plays and sounds, we'll be fans for a long time to come!

Carefully chosen tonewoods for tone and stability

Before you ever plug the guitar in, the Fender Custom Shop Ltd. 1952 Time Machine Heavy Relic Telecaster sings with a resonance and clarity that is hard to find in lesser instruments. Its carefully selected 2-piece ash body is joined to a rift-sawn maple neck. Cut radially from quarter-sawn logs cut at a diagonal to the initial quartering cuts, rift-sawn necks are ultra-stable, with thinner grain that is less susceptible to warping and twisting than flat-sawn neck blanks. The result is a neck that is more impervious to changes in temperature and humidity. Perfect for gigging in Phoenix after a two-week residency in Miami!

Vintage-correct construction

There aren't many guitar tones as sought after as a good vintage Tele. The Fender Custom shop 1952 Time Machine Heavy Relic Tele gives you so many of those to-die-for features, in a highly playable modern instrument that is significantly more affordable than a vintage prize. Like with the '52 Heavy Relic's ancestors, your hand will immediately be comfortable around the tinted rift-sawn maple neck, contoured with a satisfying '52 U profile that fills out your hand just right. But this instrument also has a modern 9.5" fingerboard radius for comfortable chording and string bends that don't fret out.

The Heavy Relic treatment

Though a relic'd guitar finish is almost as common these days as a flawless factory finish, it the was Fender Custom Shop that pioneered the process — and know how to do it better than anyone. Fender offers different levels of finish distressing, the most intensely distressed of which is the Heavy Relic treatment, found on Fender Custom Shop's 1952 Time Machine Heavy Relic Telecaster. It starts with a period-correct nitrocellulose lacquer finish. Nitro finishes — standard back in the day — are significantly thinner than today's polyurethane finishes, allowing the guitar to breathe and enhancing its tonal characteristics. Heavy Relic guitars are then put through the aging process to give you an axe that looks and feels like it's seen decades of frontline action. The process creates instruments that are spitting images of the originals. Without sneaking a look at the neck heel stamps, you'd be hard-pressed to distinguish the Fender Custom Shop 1952 Time Machine Heavy Relic Tele from the real deal.

Fender Custom Shop 1952 Time Machine Heavy Relic Telecaster Features:

• 2-piece ash body, nitrocellulose lacquer relic finish
• Medium-tinted rift-sawn maple neck, '52 U profile, relic nitro finish
• Maple fingerboard, 9.5" radius, 25.5" scale length, 21 jumbo (6100) frets, dot inlays
• Bridge pickup: handwound '51 Loaded Nocaster
• Neck pickup: handwound '51 Loaded Nocaster
• Fat 50's Tele wiring
• 3-way pickup selector
• '51/'54 bridge with brass saddles
• 1.65" bone nut; vintage style tuners, round string tree
• Factory strings: 9–42; standard tuning
• Included hardshell case, strap, certificate of authenticity

The condition of this guitar is mint; it looks like it did when originally sold. 

Guitar weighs: 7.5 Lbs