Which neck wear is more authentic /accurate to a Vintage 50's Tele?

learn from the masters - click to enlarge, save to disc and blow up further in an image viewer

 

Personally, I'd never have a guitar made with a relic'ed neck (or any other part of it). The smooth finish on a virgin neck is an aid to bending. Any wearing away of that finish would impede smooth bending. Why have a guitar that you have to struggle to play? I'd replace the neck on both of those guitars because, IMHO, they look hideous. If that wear pattern had resulted from decades of hard playing, I'd say that both necks are beyond their useful lives. Fender equips their guitars with bolt-on necks for a reason: so that they can be easily replaced. The wear patterns on both, at a glance, look pretty similar, but those frets that show relatively little wear seem to indicate that the player of those guitars assiduously avoided playing music in certain keys. The weird wear pattern looks unnatural.

 

What an awful, crusty guitar.....terrible,just terrible

 

Well, I never owned a Tele with nitro-finished neck. The nitro was prone to fretboard wear. After 40 years with my ‘70 Tele, the only wear was to the frets (totally gone) and bare wood where necks today are “rolled” on the edges. No wear at all on the maple fretboard. The poly used in the ‘70s wasn’t too prone to wear. As far as I can see at the Vintage shows, where 70s Teles are very common, not nearly as much wear as you’d see on a 50s or early 60s Tele.

 

Do these people never play in C??

 

Yes and poly does not get soft from sweat, like nitro does. Those old nitro finishes that were in contact with sweat a lot, you can usually just scrape off with you fingernails.