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I'm honestly not sure what you're talking about. There are a lot of tweaked and lightly modernised Teles on the market, but Fender will happily sell you a perio

I'm honestly not sure what you're talking about. There are a lot of tweaked and lightly modernised Teles on the market, but Fender will happily sell you a period-correct Tele, design flaws and all. When does a Tele cease to be a Tele? If it has a compensated three-saddle bridge? If it has a six-saddle bridge? If it has a truss rod that actually works? If it has a humbucker in the neck? I dunno. Given how hugely inconsistent the early Teles were, it's hard to definitively say what a "real" Tele ought to be like. The Blackguard necks were all shaped by hand, with the only commonality being a thickness at the 12th fret of about 1". There are a huge range of profiles, thicknesses and fingerboard radii on vintage Teles. They used whatever body woods were cheap - ash, alder, poplar and pine, often switching woods within the same year. The Tele has always been a crude, cheap working man's guitar, so I see no sense in being a purist about what is fundamentally a mongrel.

Tade0 8y ago
> I'm honestly not sure what you're talking about. To illustrate my point: https://dk1xgl0d43mu1.cloudfront.net/user_files/esp/product_images/000/020/426/large.png?1453395150 https://dk1xgl0d43mu1.cloudfront.net/user_files/esp/product_... The majority of Teles I've seen are like this. Hard to say it "stood the test of time" if there's no agreed upon definition of it.
- beat 8y ago
  I don't know where you're looking, if that's what the majority of Teles looks like to you. The borders are definitely fuzzy, but "Telecaster" to me means having enough Tele-like traits... the simple slab body, bolt-on neck, 6-on-side tuners, twangy single-coil bridge pickup, controls on a separate plate away from the bridge. It doesn't need to have all of these. Most Teles made by Fender/Squier and most of their copiers follow this template. They're not just metal-oriented guitars with a Tele shape.
- jdietrich 8y ago
  Here's the "T Style Guitars" section on Thomann, Europe's largest guitar dealer. There are certainly a few bonkers ESP and Schecter shredbeasts, but the overall range is overwhelmingly represented by relatively traditional Teles, perhaps with a six-saddle bridge or a neck humbucker. https://www.thomann.de/gb/t_models.html https://www.thomann.de/gb/t_models.html
grawprog 8y ago
Honestly, my biggest problem with telecasters are the sound of the pickups. I know they're easy to swap out, but those stock 'lipstick' ones on pretty much every Fender or knockoff i've tried just seem to have kind of a hollow lifeless sound. The bridge pickups sound like the neck pickups on other guitars and the neck ones just seem to have a hollow twanging sound I've never really liked. It does seem like swapping pickups on telecasters is pretty common. https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/20164-mod-garage-before-you-swap-out-those-tele-pickups https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/20164-mod-garage-befo... In all the years I've played I've just never really had any strong desire to own one.
- jdietrich 8y ago
  The Tele is a strange beast. There's a magic to the Tele that I've never been able to fully understand; a good Tele is more than the sum of its parts. It responds to vibrato and dynamics in a way that is quite unlike any other solid-body guitar. The overwhelming brightness can be difficult to tame, but it can also produce and extraordinarily open and harmonically complex tone if you work at it. It's worth bearing in mind that the Telecaster was designed for the heavy flatwound or pure nickel strings that were the norm in the 50s. A modern light gauge set of nickel-plated roundwound strings will sound exceptionally bright on a Tele. A plain third string won't intonate properly on a three-saddle bridge either. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a3qAp81vY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a3qAp81vY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnDZ7yb5g-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnDZ7yb5g-c
  - beat 8y ago
    The brightness can be tamed just by rolling off the tone control. If I'm playing a passive-pickup Tele (my #1 Tele has EMGs and behaves differently), I'll usually roll both the tone and volume knobs off at least a bit, to tame it. It's very easy for guitarists to just turn the knobs up all the way and leave them there, but the Tele controls are a whole new world of magic. Another solution is to use a hotter bridge pickup (which will be necessarily darker), and replace the neck pickup with, heck, almost anything else.

Tade0 8y ago

> I'm honestly not sure what you're talking about. To illustrate my point: https://dk1xgl0d43mu1.cloudfront.net/user_files/esp/product_images/000/020/426/large.png?1453395150 https://dk1xgl0d43mu1.cloudfront.net/user_files/esp/product_... The majority of Teles I've seen are like this. Hard to say it "stood the test of time" if there's no agreed upon definition of it.

beat 8y ago
I don't know where you're looking, if that's what the majority of Teles looks like to you. The borders are definitely fuzzy, but "Telecaster" to me means having enough Tele-like traits... the simple slab body, bolt-on neck, 6-on-side tuners, twangy single-coil bridge pickup, controls on a separate plate away from the bridge. It doesn't need to have all of these. Most Teles made by Fender/Squier and most of their copiers follow this template. They're not just metal-oriented guitars with a Tele shape.
jdietrich 8y ago
Here's the "T Style Guitars" section on Thomann, Europe's largest guitar dealer. There are certainly a few bonkers ESP and Schecter shredbeasts, but the overall range is overwhelmingly represented by relatively traditional Teles, perhaps with a six-saddle bridge or a neck humbucker. https://www.thomann.de/gb/t_models.html https://www.thomann.de/gb/t_models.html

grawprog 8y ago

Honestly, my biggest problem with telecasters are the sound of the pickups. I know they're easy to swap out, but those stock 'lipstick' ones on pretty much every Fender or knockoff i've tried just seem to have kind of a hollow lifeless sound. The bridge pickups sound like the neck pickups on other guitars and the neck ones just seem to have a hollow twanging sound I've never really liked. It does seem like swapping pickups on telecasters is pretty common. https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/20164-mod-garage-before-you-swap-out-those-tele-pickups https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/20164-mod-garage-befo... In all the years I've played I've just never really had any strong desire to own one.

jdietrich 8y ago
The Tele is a strange beast. There's a magic to the Tele that I've never been able to fully understand; a good Tele is more than the sum of its parts. It responds to vibrato and dynamics in a way that is quite unlike any other solid-body guitar. The overwhelming brightness can be difficult to tame, but it can also produce and extraordinarily open and harmonically complex tone if you work at it. It's worth bearing in mind that the Telecaster was designed for the heavy flatwound or pure nickel strings that were the norm in the 50s. A modern light gauge set of nickel-plated roundwound strings will sound exceptionally bright on a Tele. A plain third string won't intonate properly on a three-saddle bridge either. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a3qAp81vY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a3qAp81vY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnDZ7yb5g-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnDZ7yb5g-c
- beat 8y ago
  The brightness can be tamed just by rolling off the tone control. If I'm playing a passive-pickup Tele (my #1 Tele has EMGs and behaves differently), I'll usually roll both the tone and volume knobs off at least a bit, to tame it. It's very easy for guitarists to just turn the knobs up all the way and leave them there, but the Tele controls are a whole new world of magic. Another solution is to use a hotter bridge pickup (which will be necessarily darker), and replace the neck pickup with, heck, almost anything else.