Fender American Standard Telecaster Matching Headstock

Which amplifier and/or effect(s) do you use with this guitar?

I’ve used it with a Marshall DSL50 and currently with a VOX MV50 AC with analog pedals (Trex Nova Comp, Trex Moller Tube Screamer, MXR Fet driver dist/fuzz, MXR Carboncopy delay...) and a DV Mark small 112 cab.

What playing and musical style(s) do you play with this guitar?
Blues/Rock, Country

What are your thoughts on the workmanship, electronics, and finish of this instrument?

I chose the Ice blue metal finish. The finish is very carefully done, the finely glittered paint is very classy and remains sober-looking while delivering that little extra that characterizes high-end models. The chrome hardware and the neck’s wood nuances come together perfectly.

Ass for the luthers’ work, no problem, this is American Standard quality and you get a god wood resonance. The electronics is noiseless. The neck is just perfect for me, and after trying many a Telecaster model I can tell it’s only slightly under the Elite series but clearly above the usual Standard series models.
The knobs and switches are nice, neither too hard or soft.


How is its intonation? Does its neck, touch, feel, shape, etc complement your playing style?

It perfectly stays in tune, even playing heavy bends. The neck matches my playing style. I consider the Telecaster to allow a very wide array of styles and sounds if you pair it with the right effects and amps. The nech is perfect for picking and fingerpicking.To me, the rosewood fretboard sounds more precise and pleasant than the maple one while retaining the same snappiness.

Do clean, crunchy and distorted sounds adapt well to different microphone positions? Are the guitar's different frequencies and sounds well-balanced?

The clean sounds are just perfect with the neck and middle pickup positions (although sometimes too bright, which can be EQed on the amp or corrected using the guitar’s Tone knob). I find the Vintage 58 pickups to sound more precise and “organic” than the Noiseless series that I’ve owned on one of my previous Teles (the Noiseless are good piuckups of course, but they tend to eat frequencies away).

For distorted sounds, I put a Dimarzio ChopperT (a single-space humbucker) in the Bridge position to have more gain with my distortion pedals without altering too much the guitar’s personality.

Wired in parallel with the neck pickup, the combination is excellent for rhythms. Of course, the original pickup is better-crafted and sounds wonderful but it still lacked a bit of punch to my taste (I’ll also mention I was just out of a “humbucker-only” period).

Since then, I’ve put the original pickup back on as I have to sell it to finance another project, and I rediscover its original vintage sound with more snap, brightness, twang…

Depuis, j'ai remonté le micro d'origine car je dois la vendre pour financer un autre projet et je redécouvre ses sonorités plus vintage avec plus de claquant, de brillance, de twang...

What are the pros and cons of this guitar?

Pros :
- one of the most beautiful models in a limited edition
- very good pickups, one notch better than the series standard models
- the whole is well-balanced and up to par for such a price range
Cons :
- None that I can think of