£8500 for a telecaster? REALLY?

Strat54

@guitars4you I have copies of three Fender Masterbuilder's logs from the 90's, back then they were averaging 12 completed guitars each a month. That was before Mike Eldred took over and the bean counters realised that the figures didn't add up....assistants were appointed jobs were outsourced to other staff such as paint and pickups and like you correctly say 300 plus guitars per masterbuilder per year became the norm. At this point Hamel, Stuart, Suhr, Baker etc left not willing to put their names to guitars they simply didn't build.