June 4, 1981. It's my birthday and I'm holding my new Tele dad got for me

June 4, 1981. It's my birthday and I'm holding my new Tele dad got for me. I wanted a Strat, but that's another story and not as good as this one.

It was afternoon, and mom called dad to remind him to bring home a guitar for my birthday. As some of you know, my dad John was recruited by CBS away from Yamaha to become president of the CBS Musical Instruments Division, and hopefully sort out the bugs. Maybe we'll get into some of those stories from back in the day, but moving on....

Dad had hired Bill Schultz and some other guys from Yamaha. Bill really, really, REALLY wanted to come over to CBS from Yamaha, and dad hired him and installed Bill as president of the Fender/Rodgers/Rhodes unit within the Division.

On my birthday, dad calls Bill into his office and told him to get David (me) a guitar, whatever the latest thing is. Bill called Roger Cox, head of R&D, into his office and he tells him to get one of the prototype '52 Teles and bring it to his office. Roger went to Scott Zimmerman and John Page told them to get one ready for John McLaren by the end of the day. Scott said the neck is warped so they need to replace it, and Roger replied to just get one out of the factory because they've run the first ten.

My brother Johnny walked with Scott into the big CBS factory, went right to the polish department where they had a few of the new '52 Tele necks. Scott selected the best one and then the guys walked back to R&D in the the old building. Scott and either Steve Bolinger or John Page put the guitar together and into a prototype tweed case. Johnny was instructed to take it to Bill's office, not knowing anything about it being a guitar for me.

Trouble was, that they had put this Tele together for Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, and had planned to put another neck on it before she came to pick it up in a few days. Didn't matter, Bill had given the order.

When Johnny brought the Tele to Bill's office, a new Super Champ was sitting there, one of the first to come off the line. Turns out, that amp was for me. Later that afternoon, Bill dropped by our house to bring the Tele and Super Champ.

So that night, I'm pumped because I knew I would getting the new guitar. It wasn't the Candy Apple Red "The Strat" I wanted, but hey, it was cool. So, I open my birthday present and Johnny realized that's the same guitar he'd been shuttling around the factory!

As for that Tele, Johnny has in his office. In Leo's lab Johnny found an old grey box labeled "old Tele pickups" and installed them in the guitar.