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This is a standard (made in Mexico) Tele™ that was manufactured in 1996 but purchased new a few months ago. The guitar languished in the stockroom of a local store until the spring of 2000. The owner rediscovered the guitar as he was preparing to move the store to larger quarters and I purchased it after a few weeks when I found that I couldn't keep my hands off it each time I was in the store.
I can't say why I was so strongly attracted to it. It just "felt right." The neck is very comfortable and fast, with very good fretwork. I like the feel of the neck well enough that a fairly large "dimple" in the bass side just below the nut couldn't dissuade me from purchasing the guitar. This "dimple" appears to have occured at the factory, before the neck was finished, and is an example of why one must shop with care. Even though I like this neck, it really should never have left the factory. If the dimple were just a half-inch further "south" it would be a real irritation. Where it is it is just a minor cosmetic flaw.
Other than the dimple mentioned above, this guitar is very well finished with a smooth neck and a nearly flawless light blue metallic finish on the body. The frets are all smooth and the ends, though not perfect, are dressed more evenly than is typical in this line.
Unplugged sustain is very good in spite of the fact that the bridge is not of the string-through-body type. Part of what attracted me to this guitar was the way it sang even when unplugged.
The bridge saddles are pretty cheesy, I'm not sure how well they'd do if one wanted to crank the action up high for playing slide guitar. At the very least one would have to replace the screws with longer ones to raise the action very much. Probably the biggest disadvantage to this bridge is that it makes changing to a brass bridge or installing a Fishman PowerBridge™ more difficult. Since I like this quitar well enough that I am seriously considering installing a PowerBridge, I will probably end up drilling the body and installing ferrules.
The sealed tuners are very smooth and solid with very little backlash. The plating on all of the hardware appears of good quality but, of course, only time and corrosive sweat will tell for sure.
The string slots in the plastic nut are a tad deeper than ideal, but the guitar tunes smoothly without any binding.
The pickup switch is of decent quality and the pots are good enough that I didn't bother to replace them when I performed the "T-Riffic" modification (see the wiring section) on this guitar.
The pickups are a bit anemic in output but have buckets of Tele twang. I would say they are probably pretty close to how the old Teles sounded when they were new. I like them, but then I like the traditional Tele tone. If you prefer the fatter sound of modern Teles or you have to make one guitar do double or triple duty you'll probably end up replacing the pickups. The tone control is very effective and the volume control does not dampen high frequencies when plugged into any of my equipment.
Teles tend to hum less than Strats and that was the case here. The grounded metal cover on the neck pickup and the fact that the bridge pickup is mounted in a grounded metal plate go a long way towards suppressing hum. Still, the situation is not ideal and can be improved some by shielding the guitar, which I did (see the wiring section). Shielded, noise is tolerable up to very high gain levels although there is definitely still a touch of single-coil "presence."
Experience with this and other standard (made in Mexico) Fender guitars indicates that they can be one of the better deals going and dollar for dollar they are probably a much better value than the USA versions especially if you are planning on replacing the pickups and/or doing any custom wiring. However, you must really shop carefully because there are a few lemons lurking in the line. Also, they do not hold their resale value as well as the USA versions.
John Atchley
August, 2000
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