Developed by Seth Lover, who joined Fender in 1971, the “cunife” pickup features a two-coil humbucking design that uses 12 cunife screws connected on the bottom by a steel plate. Cunife is an alloy named for its three constituent metals—copper (Cu), nickel (Ni) and iron (Fe)—and in instrument pickups it produces a distinctive “hi fidelity” sound with rich bass and clear treble, and they never lose their attack or definition when pushed. We used samples of the original magnets to develop these pickups over a two-year period, and we’ve brought the material back exactly as it was 40 years ago. For this very special Limited Edition Cunife Tele Custom Relic, we took elements of the classic double-bound Telecaster Custom and added custom features including the classic cunife wide-range humbucker paired with a hand-wound Texas Special.

The two-piece select alder body wears a Relic lacquer finish. The tinted quartersawn maple neck features a ’60-style oval-“C” back-shape and a flat-lam rosewood fingerboard with a 9.5” radius and 21 narrow tall frets. Hand-wound Texas Special (bridge) and wide-range cunife (neck) pickups feature three-way switching and Dual-Stack HS Tele wiring. Additional features include a three-ply mint green pickguard, ’58-’63 Tele bridge with RSD saddles for perfect intonation, vintage-style tuners, bone nut and wing string tree. Also includes deluxe hardshell case, strap and certificate of authenticity.