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tjon901 « Combination of classic Fender designs »
Published on 06/28/11 at 10:37The Pawn Shop line from Fender is a great new series of guitars. This series of guitars is based on what you might find in a pawn shop in the mid 70s. These guitars are what people would have been putting together in their garages at home back in the day. They are essentially parts bin guitars that Fender feels represent the custom guitar attitudes of the time. Fender has created some cool designs for the Pawn Shop series based on what some crazy luthier would have made with a few broken Fender guitars. This guitar is the Pawn Shop '51. This guitar is pretty much a copy of a Squier they put out a few years ago called the 51. I remeber these guitars sold like crazy and many people modded them even more. This guitar has the basic strat shape and a full face pickguard like you would find on an early 50s P-bass. It has a Texas Special single coil in the neck and an Enforcer humbucker in the bridge next to the hardtail. The controls on this guitar are cool. First is the volume knob that has a push pull pot for coil splitting the bridge pickup. Where you would expect the tone knob to be is actually a rotary pickups selector. The knob has a notch in the middle so you know when you got it 50/50 The neck is a 21 fret tele style maple neck.
UTILIZATION
The neck on the 51 is pretty nice. The frets are bigger than they would have been back in the day. It has a 9.5 radius so it is kinda vintage there but the big frets help level it out. It has your basic Fender profile. I find most Fender necks to be pretty similar. With the strat body you get typical strat upper fret access. The neck joint gets in the way if you are playing on the highest frets but it is not bad.
SOUNDS
The guitar is a little limited in versatility but the sounds it can do are good. The Enforcer humbucker in the bridge is nice and thick. It has a good sharp pick attack and good clarity. When you split the humbucker it still retains some bite and you can get a single coil bridge tone similar to that of a telecasters. The Texas Special in the neck is a common pickup now in Fender guitars. It is the standard when it comes to hot rod single coils. It is hot and bitey but can still ring like a bell. The neck pickup really smooths out when you add some gain to the sound. Both pickups together give you a nice funky tone with the big twang from the neck position and the beef from the bridge pickup.
OVERALL OPINION
This guitar is really nice but I kind of wish they just kept it as a Squire version was like 200 dollars and this is like 600 dollars and it is pretty much the same guitar. They both were made overseas and the quality is not that much different. If you are looking at getting this guitar I recommend you try and find one of the Squier versions first to try out it might meet all your needs for less than 1/3 of the price.
UTILIZATION
The neck on the 51 is pretty nice. The frets are bigger than they would have been back in the day. It has a 9.5 radius so it is kinda vintage there but the big frets help level it out. It has your basic Fender profile. I find most Fender necks to be pretty similar. With the strat body you get typical strat upper fret access. The neck joint gets in the way if you are playing on the highest frets but it is not bad.
SOUNDS
The guitar is a little limited in versatility but the sounds it can do are good. The Enforcer humbucker in the bridge is nice and thick. It has a good sharp pick attack and good clarity. When you split the humbucker it still retains some bite and you can get a single coil bridge tone similar to that of a telecasters. The Texas Special in the neck is a common pickup now in Fender guitars. It is the standard when it comes to hot rod single coils. It is hot and bitey but can still ring like a bell. The neck pickup really smooths out when you add some gain to the sound. Both pickups together give you a nice funky tone with the big twang from the neck position and the beef from the bridge pickup.
OVERALL OPINION
This guitar is really nice but I kind of wish they just kept it as a Squire version was like 200 dollars and this is like 600 dollars and it is pretty much the same guitar. They both were made overseas and the quality is not that much different. If you are looking at getting this guitar I recommend you try and find one of the Squier versions first to try out it might meet all your needs for less than 1/3 of the price.