The Mott The Hoople Hardtail is said to one of the first hardtail Fender ever made. But hard to actually confirm this. It is fairly known that Fender did pre-stamp neckplates in batches back in the very early days, and would just randomly select one when the neck was to be mounted. But also it is said that #:0100 and up was the start of Fenders first guitars. The serial range 0001 - 0099 was a also started on in 1954 and not very documented how they came to be other than Fender serialised a few custom builds in that range.

Pete Overend Watts bought this in 1971 when he was on tour with Mott The Hoople.

You can hear this guitar being used on "The Hoople", their last album before they broke up.

Watts has said that artists like Brian May, David Gilmour, Gary Moore, Mick Ralphs, Ariel Bender, Mick Ronson, Jack Bruce and Ted Nugent has played this guitar

The Guitar neck is carved by Tadeo Gomez and dated TG 9-54 (October 1954)

Masking tape indicating final inspection "Beck 10-4-54"

Gruhn Guitars did an appraisal of this in 2017 and concluded it was the earliest hardtail that has been recorded.

Watts died in 2017 and the guitar was sold in July 2018 for £47.800

Source and photo: Bonhams