Larry’s Lab: Fender Ultra-Light Telecaster

What’s Larry’s Lab?  Fender’s CEO Larry Thomas is a guitar guy.  It’s obvious when you talk to him the passion that he has for the history of the brand.  The visions he has for the future of the products are on display in Larry’s Lab, a very special room we were ushered into at NAMM 2012.  The guitars in this room have been commsioned by Larry to push the envelope.  They run the gamut from wild design studies to familiar Fender shapes with new manufacturing techniques under the hood.  These are all one-off prototypes; we got authorization from Larry himself to show them to you here.  

This is one of the lightest Telecasters we have ever touched.  This prototype has an ash body that instead of being chambered, has been fully hollowed out and filled with a piece of Paulowina wood.  It fits perfectly inside the body like a puzzle piece.  It’s got an ash veneer top, and looks very nice indeed.  We didn’t have a scale handy but it is shockingly light.