The real telecaster bass by Squier

 The Telecaster bass has long been sort of a mixed bag of a concept in 1968: take the 51 Precision-bass slab-body, keep the tele original headstock and add a Gibson-type humbucker in neck position, and name it Telecaster bass. For many musician, it was way too far from the original Precision and the name Telecaster appeared as strange as it gets. 

The Squier Telecaster Bass, as close to the Telecaster guitar as possible, even the pickup selector reminds us the original esquire!

The original Fender Telecaster bass from 1968

Why not having a real-tele-body shape? Fender didn't answer this question until recently, letting many brands proposing their own bass adaptation of the original Telecaster guitar: G&L, Warmoth, Fernandes, ... 

The original Telecaster bass from 1968 was later completed by second model in 1972 a much proper reissue of the 1951 P-bass with the single coil in the middle of the body as the original. It seems the 1968 had tried to take on the Gibson SG EB-0 that was more and more popular at the time. Fender had hired Seth Lover, the former designer of Gibson's humbuckers, and built many Telecaster guitar models with these "Wide Range" pickups during the 70's. It's no mystery that the Telecaster bass became part of the evolution of Fender sound design in this era until 1979.

The P-51 bass was reissued as a Japanese model in 1994, still no telecaster body. Squier produced its adaptation in 2007 in two models: one as close to the guitar model as possible, the other paying tribute to the Telecaster bass of 1968 with two pickups, a single JB pickup style and a humbucker (probably to balance the sound that tends to be too muddy)

The series wasn't very successful and didn't have a Fender version afterwards - Squier disruptive models tends to be test drive for a large-scale production - instead, Fender did release a Chinese "modern player" of the telecaster bass, with two wide range humbucker this time, in 2015

The Fernandes from 1996