On the continued hunt for a Tele - following on from the less than uplifting experience with the loaned Baja, I went into Jimi's Music Store - the only big guitar emporium in Ireland I'd never yet visited. Big mistake. The place is like an Aladdin's cave of desirable electrics and basses of every shape and hue. Not a massive store, but most of the guitars in it definitely fall into the I-want bracket. I tried about half a dozen Teles, all solid bodies, excluding the very desirable but not for me semi-hollow Thinline models.
What became abundantly clear is that many of the more modern Teles don't actually sound anything like what you would imagine a 'proper' Telecaster should sound like.
I asked the main man there what had happened, why the difference? He said that in his opinion, most of the mid=priced Tele models had been 'sanitised' sound wise, for a less extreme tone with the result that soundwise they are now almost indistinguishable from most of the mid-priced Strats out there. He said in his experience, most working musicians nowadays aren't looking for guitars with a very distinctive tone - but rather something that covers a broader range of sounds reasonably well. That definitely ties up with my first impression of the Baja in the rant upthread. The only difference between the Baja and its fellow mid-range peers I can see is the distinctive phase-switching circuitry they use to try to give it the traditional Tele sound in one of the pickup configurations - but which doesn't really cut it, imho.
Anyways to cut a long story short I eventually came across this thing below - and in Claire's words above, decided this was the one/life's too short - fkit. I did sell a couple of other guitars in the house recently - but this was never part of the plan (honest dear wife) ...
A used 2016 '52 model Tele. In a manner reminiscent of the Judaen People's Front - not the 1982-97: *U.S. Vintage Reissue ’52 Telecaster" mind, nor indeed the "American Vintage Reissue ’52 Telecaster" that ran from 1997 to 2012, but your actual genuine "American Vintage ’52 Telecaster” that ran from 2012-2018.
Supposedly the last model was a more accurate copy of the original 52*, and the clear varnish on the neck stays whiter than the orangey hues on the earlier reincarnations, and the pickup design reverted back to an earlier Alnico 3 magnet design. - but who gives a d@mn when underneath it just sounds
exactly like a proper old-school twangy Telecaster. Whatever they have done in terms of type of woods, bridge saddles, design of pickups or anything else, it just makes this thing sound like a pure Nashville twang-monster. Way over budget - hell there never was any budget in the first place - couple of chips in all the usual places (Nitro finish), and a fancy case. Even with the dodgy intonation, it still feels and sounds so damn nice to play that you have to forgive it. Don't think I've put it down much most of the last week.
So much for the axe-rationalisation programme
*For any fellow Tele anoraks, see below:
https://areyouexperiment.wordpress.com/2017/05/20/fender-52-telecaster-reissue/