Fender Shenandoah 12 String / sn 24043 1969 - $600 (Seaside)

.
Fender Shenandoah 12 String / sn 24043 1969 With hard shell case $700 / without case $600 Plays nice.
Hockey stich peg head.
Block inlays.
Patented Fender Truss Tension Tube.
Has finish cracks below sound hole (very common).
Has some cracks in an area near the upper bout near pic guard that doesn't affect playing.
Double bound dreadnought body with a spruce top and mahogany back and sides in Natural finish.
3-ring black and white rosette.
Mahogany bridge.
Neck is slim to medium depth C/Soft V hybrid profile birdseye maple neck and bound rosewood fingerboard with pearloid block inlays.
Fender 6-per side sealed tuning machines.
1 ¾” nut width.
25.
5” scale.
In Seaside on Fremont near Hilby show contact info ---------------- Fender Acoustics History Fender’s rich acoustic guitar history dates back to the early 1960s, when the company injected a much-needed dose of modernity and youthfully exuberant Southern California sun-and-fun culture into the old world of acoustic guitar design.
A Fender acoustic guitar was not one for which you dressed formally or that you displayed as a valuable relic.
It wasn’t for the hushed classical concert stage or for hanging over the fireplace.
A Fender acoustic guitar was for throwing in the car and hitting the beach.
It was for coffeehouses and campfires.
Fender acoustics were good-sounding, cool-looking and solidly built instruments, as seen in the classic Fender advertisements of the 1960s.
Most of all, Fender acoustic guitars were fun.
And back in the day, some pretty heavy hitters used them, from rock strummers to country pickers—artists such as Johnny Cash, George Jones, Buck Owens, Tex Ritter, Wanda Jackson, Charley Pride, Ray Davies, Robbie Robertson and Elvis Presley.
After the phenomenal success of Fender electric guitars, basses and amplifiers in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, it seemed only natural that rapidly growing Fender would turn its attention to the acoustic guitar world.
Folk music was booming in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and acoustic guitars remained an integral part of rock, country and pop.
Several inexpensive acoustic guitar models were offered in the late 1940s by Radio-Tel, the Santa Ana, Calif.
, distributor run by F.
C.
Hall and Don Randall that was the predecessor of Randall’s future Fender Sales organization, but it would be well more than a decade before acoustic guitars bearing the Fender name would appear.
The acoustic chapter of Fender history begins in earnest with the early 1962 arrival of master luthier Roger Rossmeisl, a former Rickenbacker guitar designer and builder, who quite literally showed up one day at Leo Fender’s office, as author Richard Smith recalls in Fender: The Sound Heard ’Round the World: Confident he could make a job for himself in Leo’s expanding universe, Rossmeisl had already moved to Fullerton.
He told Leo, in essence, “I’m here, and I’m going to start working for you.
” Leo liked Roger’s cocky self-assured manner, admired his work, and saw the opportunity to put the Fender mark on acoustic guitars.
Leo hired him on the spot.
The son of a renowned German luthier, Rossmeisl immigrated to the United States in 1953, bringing his flamboyantly innovative design sense and peerless expertise in archtop guitar construction with him.
After a short stint at Gibson, Rossmeisl moved to Rickenbacker, where, from the mid-1950s through the early 1960s, he created many of the company’s most famous designs, including several acoustic/electric models, the “cresting wave” body and headstock shape, and the 4001 bass guitar model.
Rossmeisl set about work immediately, and Fender’s first acoustic guitars — the King, Concert, Classic and short-lived Folk — debuted in summer 1963.
They were attractive flat-top instruments with electric guitar features such as bolt-on necks, Stratocaster-style headstocks and screwed-on pickguards.
Apart from a couple hundred very early guitars, all four models had an unusual internal bracing system in the form of a 1”-diameter rod of aircraft aluminum that ran parallel to the strings from the front to the back of the body.
This “broomstick” stabilizing mechanism absorbed the enormous pressure placed on the top of an acoustic guitar by string tension.
These four acoustic guitars were produced at the already crowded Fender factory at 500 S.
Raymond Ave.
in Fullerton, Calif.
Within months, however, the new Fender Acoustic Instrument plant was completed at 1560-1580 Missile Way in nearby Anaheim, and it was there that acoustic guitar production was moved in January 1964.
Later that year, in December, the small-bodied Palomino acoustic was introduced.
The mid-1960s positively abounded with Fender acoustic guitar models.
The budget-priced Malibu and Newporter models were introduced in April 1965, followed that July by two 12-string models, the Shenandoah and the smaller, less expensive Villager, both of which featured Fender’s new “hockey stick” headstock design.
In summer 1966, the Classic was discontinued and the King was renamed the Kingman.
Although there was little innovation in Fender acoustic guitar design after CBS bought Fender and took over in early 1965, one notable exception was the Rossmeisl-designed Wildwood series, which was introduced in summer 1966 and based on the Kingman.
These guitars came in half a dozen dramatic dyed-wood colors — called Wildwood finishes — created by injecting various dyes directly into growing beech trees before harvesting.
The Wildwood acoustics were distinctively attractive instruments, but they never really caught on.
Fender’s final U.
S.
-made acoustic model of the decade, the Redondo, was introduced in summer 1968, and Japanese-made F-Series acoustic models were introduced in summer 1969.
As the 1960s waned, so did Fender’s interest in acoustic guitars.
All flat-top Fender acoustic models — the Concert, Kingman, Shenandoah, Malibu, Villager, Newporter, Wildwood, Palomino and Redondo — were discontinued by late 1971.
Rossmeisl returned to Germany early in the 1970s and passed away there in 1979 at age 52.
As Fender chafed under CBS rule throughout the decade, only the Japanese F-Series acoustics remained, to no particular acclaim.
They too were eventually discontinued, in 1979.