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Vintage V65V ReIssued Series £329, G&L USA Fullerton Standard Legacy
£999, Maybach Teleman T54 £1,530
while the small frets and 7.25-inch ’board radius
aren’t the barrier to faux pedal-steel licks that they
might be if this guitar was strung with a set of 0.011s.
Stepping on an old Tube Screamer proves fruitful,
too, with vocal bridge-pickup lead tones and Black
Keys-style raunch at the neck. There’s no getting
away from it – three-saddle bridges are a compromise
when it comes to intonation, but it isn’t a major issue
in day-to-day playing and compensated saddles are a
cheap and straightforward upgrade.
Though the ’60s Jazzmaster Modified and ’70s
Stratocaster are both fine instruments, it’s the ’50s
Telecaster that we’d take home. With the kind of
characterfully chunky neck you don’t see too often at
this end of the market, plus an addictive combination
of power and clarity (there’s that c-word again),
it’s every inch a serious guitar.
The prices of Fender’s Mexican-made reissue
models may have crept up a little, but Tim Shaw
and the rest of the Fender R&D team have
delivered improvements where they count.
PICKUP LINES
FENDER’S IN-HOUSE ELECTRONICS GURU TIM SHAW ON HOW THE EVOLUTION
OF FENDER’S GOLDEN-ERA PICKUPS INFORMED VINTERA SERIES R&D
“As with the American Original series we launched last year, we had models
defi ned by and divided into various eras of Fender history. Particularly in
the 50s, there were a lot of subtle variations in the pickups as the models
evolved. Part of the challenge was in deciding the best specs to use for
particular pickups out of the many possible variations.
“We decided to use Formvar wire for the 50s pickups, because it was the
most common for Fender in that era, though plain enamel wire was also
available then. The coating on Formvar is the thickest of any coating we use
and this changes a property of pickups called distributed capacitance. Simply
put, pickups wound with Formvar seem to have more ‘air’ in them.
“By 1963, Fender had pretty much changed over to plain enamel-coated
magnet wire, and this coating is a bit thinner than Formvar. These pickups
don’t have quite that amount of ‘air’ and Fender was also putting a bit more
wire on the coils. The overall tone has a bit less chime and a bit more focus.
In the 70s, Fender had switched to a polyurethane-coated wire, as had many
other companies. It had the thinnest coating of any of these magnet wires, so
the sound is a bit more focused yet.
“Most of the magnets Fender used during these periods were alnico V,
although the height-stagger patterns varied a bit. We chose the most
period-correct dimensions for these. The way the different magnet
heights interact with the strings is another component in the tone
of the pickup and the guitar.
“But since these guitars and basses didn’t need to be direct copies of a
particular instrument, we could follow some concepts I’ve employed on
other Fender pickup series recently – they’re voiced for each model and
its intended musical purpose, they’re voiced for a specifi c position on that
model and whenever possible, they’re hum-cancelling.
“As a designer, you have to understand what elements drive cost in
a factory. These can be materials or specifi cations, but they can also
be production processes that affect the time it takes to build parts.
By making the pickups in the Vintera Series era-specifi c, we were able
to reduce the total number of parts and specs, which helped in the
overall cost calculations.”REVIEWSGUITAR MAGAZINE 27