Team Fender: This Telecaster Custom and Pro-Amp both hail from the same year, although the Tele looks like it has considerably more mileage

A slab rosewood fretboard, binding, and a sunburst finish made the 1960 Custom model a classic alternative template for Leo’s senior solidbody.

In 1959, Alaska and Hawaii became the 49th and 50th states in the U.S. But guitar fans know ’59 as a legendary year for both Les Pauls and Telecasters—two favorite flavors among meat-and-potatoes 6-string aficionados. On the Fender side of the menu, that’s the year the Telecaster and Esquire Custom models debuted, at the NAMM show in June.

Honestly, there wasn’t much that was different about the 1960 Tele, exemplified by this month’s instrument. The biggest change was a shift from all-maple necks to slab rosewood fretboards mounted on maple. This was also done for Stratocasters and other models at the time.

The 1960 Tele Custom also has what the 1960 Fender catalog rather obviously called a “custom treatment of the body.” What exactly does that mean? The catalog notes that “a beautiful highly polished sunburst finish is used, and the top and bottom edges of the solid body are trimmed with contrasting white binding.” Fender initially had trouble keeping that binding glued in place and had to consult the Martin Guitar company to learn the proper technique.

Sans the original 3-ply pickguard, this Tele gets right to the guts of its core electronics. Note the red paint left from its original tri-color sunburst finish.

Our well-worn 1960 Telecaster Custom appears to be finished in a 2-color sunburst (as used on Strats from 1954 to 1958). After removing the pickguard, the original unfaded red from a 3-color sunburst can be seen. A.R. Duchossoir, in his book The Fender Telecaster, quotes Fender designer Bill Carson about this red pigment: “We had to search and so we sprayed many blocks of alder and put them on the top of the building to see which ones would fade and which ones wouldn’t. The red just simply got gobbled up in this chemical interaction.” Perhaps this guitar was part of that colorful experiment? For the record, Fender did manage to find a consistent red by 1961.

Severe belt rash shows this 1960 Tele Custom has seen a significant amount of playing time.

This guitar, and all other Tele Customs from 1960, have an alder body with a 3-ply pickguard. Standard, non-custom-color Teles retained a single-ply white pickguard for a couple more years.The control set is the usual T-style 3-way pickup selector with volume and tone dials. In 1972, the Fender Telecaster Custom first appeared with a Seth Lover-designed humbucker in the neck slot, and that’s the configuration made famous by Keith Richards—perhaps the most notable Telecaster Custom player.

With its picking area, upper bout, and back wear, this guitar has been used hard—which is often a sign that it’s a great-sounding and playing instrument. This model’s original list price was $239.50. The current value for one in this condition is $20,000.

Note the distinctive upper-and-lower-case model name on the headstock, versus Fender’s customary all-caps versions.

Behind the Tele is a Fender Pro-Amp from April 1960. From its introduction in 1946 as The Professional, this amp utilized a 15" speaker. It evolved from the ’40s “woodie” version to various tweed looks, including a TV front, a wide panel, and a narrow panel. In 1960, the Pro and the rest of the line transitioned to brown Tolex covering. The 1960 Pro pictured has two 6L6 power tubes pushing 40 watts through a Jensen P15N. The normal channel has volume, treble, and bass controls, while the vibrato channel has volume, treble, bass, speed, intensity, and presence controls. The original price was $289.50. The current value is $2,500.

Sources for this article include The Fender Telecaster: The Detailed Story of America’s Senior Solid Body Electric Guitar by A.R. Duchossoir and Fender Amps: The First Fifty Years by John Teagle and John Sprung.

Dr. Z releases the Z-28 Mk. II, a new take on his EF-86 design, and designed to hold its own amongst the classics of the Z Amp lineup.

Two-plus years in the making, the Z-28 Mk. II builds upon the original Z-28 by revamping the power section to two robust 5881 tubes pushing a Celestion Creamback M65 in a specially-designed 1x12 cabinet draped in muscle car red tolex. Dr. Z included his Mk. II master volume control circuit, as seen in the flagship MAZ series, to achieve full control over the volume and dynamics this high-headroom amp is capable of, be it at home at practice, or on stage.

The Z-28 Mk. II 1x12 Combo retails for $2049, and the head version for $1899. The Z-28 Mk. II is available for sale at authorized Dr. Z dealers.

For more information, please visit drzamps.com

These compact amps are designed for home practice and jamming and have custom-designed stereo speakers.

Boss announces the Dual Cube LX and Dual Cube Bass LX, the latest members of the acclaimed CUBE amplifier family from Boss and its parent company Roland. For over four decades, Cube amplifiers have brought exceptional value to musicians everywhere, offering great sound and versatile features in portable, go-everywhere designs. These new guitar and bass amplifiers carry on this long tradition, evolved with the latest Boss advancements for unmatched flexibility.

The Dual Cube LX Guitar amp produces full, punchy guitar tones that belie the amp’s compact size. There are eight versatile amp types to choose from, all with natural feel and organic response honed with decades of BOSS amp development. There’s also a mic preamp type for using the amp as a portable vocal PA system. DUAL CUBE LX The DUAL CUBE LX includes a variety of BOSS stereo and mono effects to enhance the sound. Each amp type features three user memories, allowing users to store gain, EQ, and effect settings for quick recall. Dedicated editor software opens up even more creative power, providing access to different amp and effect variations, detailed parameter adjustments, and more. The DUAL CUBE LX also features a special Stereo In amp type for connecting stereo devices, complete with advanced spatial processing for even more expansive sound. By default, it provides a full-range platform for an amp/effects processor such as the GT-1000, GT-1000CORE, GX-100, GT-1, or IR-200. With the editor, it’s possible to choose a neutral guitar amp tone inspired by the famous Roland JC-120, providing an ideal platform for stereo pedals like the BOSS 500 and 200 series.

This amp delivers big, refined bass tones from an amazingly small footprint. Five different preamp types are available, offering uncolored sounds for studio and slap playing, vintage sounds for classic styles, and aggressive modern tones for heavy genres. A variety of bass-tuned effects are also included. Like the DUAL CUBE LX, the amp features onboard memories for storing sounds and support for deeper editing via dedicated software.

The Dual Cube LX and Dual Cube Bass LX amplifiers will be available in the U.S. in September for $299.99 and $359.99 respectively. To learn more about Dual Cube LX and Dual Cube Bass LX amplifiers, visit boss.info.

Made with a super light Neodyme magnet, these custom guitar cabinets can be driven by the power amp of a Profiler PowerHead or PowerRack, as well as by utilizing any external solid-state power amp.

The Kemper Kone is a 12“ full-range speaker which is exclusively designed in cooperation with Celestion for Kemper. The Kone is controlled and driven by the Kemper Profiler’s processor to an ultra-linear (full range) frequency response, using a dedicated algorithm. In contrast to the conventional idea of a full-range system, the radiation pattern of the Kemper Kone has been narrowed towards the physics of a classic guitar speaker chassis, so that even the full-range sound carries a distinct guitar speaker character, unlike regular PA speakers or monitor speakers. To season the speaker behavior to the player’s individual taste Kemper offers the unique Sweetening“ and Directivity Parameters for detailed adjustment.

The 19 included speaker imprints offer the finest choice of well-known guitar speakers from Celestion, and many renowned other classic brands, and even rare and particular speakers. More speaker imprints may be added via future software updates.

The KEMPER Kone replacement speaker is available exclusively from the Kemper Online Store for Euro 150,- USD 180,- GBP 128,-. The prices for multi-speaker Sets below:

2x12 Set: 270,00€ 191,00 GBP 31.280 JPY 545,00 CAD

4x12 Set: 480,00€ 337,95 GBP 55.609 JPY 1.040,00 CAD

More information at:www.kemper-amps.com.