eldegas.com

I picked up an early seventies El Degas Tele Thinline copy out of curiosity. It was a pretty guitar and it was selling for 150 bucks. Took it home and plugged it into the AC15 and I can't believe what a nice guitar this is! I am wondering how this could be. Does anyone on this forum know what pickups are on these things? Or just generally why these guitars are as good as they are?

Hard to know what the pickups may be... could be a generic in-house pickup or from any supplier of that era to the Japanese manufacturers. You might get lucky and find a maker's stamp on the back of one of the pickups.

I think the quality on these can often be attributed to the fact that the Tele is a classic, simple design. Leo Fender designed guitars that could be produced quickly and in high volumes at a predictable level of quality. It's not surprising that his designs are the ones most often copied by other manufacturers.

Oh, I almost forgot - enjoy your new guitar

Hi Bill.
Sounds like you made a good score there!
Taking the pups out and turning them over should give you some indication of what they are. If this is from the 70's there's a good chance that the guitar was made by Matsumoku or Kasuga. Mats used Maxxon pickups in a lot of their humbucker equipped guitars. Not sure about the single coils though.
Pictures would be great!