horse_to_water's Music Gear Setup

A genuine bargain, this is a 3 pickup tele that provides seven settings. The neck pickup is standard tele territory. Your setting for blues and jazz. The mid pickup is a out of phase strat pickup, and is my favourite; rich yet stinging. The humbucker is great for that Jack White type of gretch-y distortion, making raucous open chording a pleasure.

You have a pine body, lacquered maple one piece neck and a six saddle bridge. If you are a tele traditionalist, look elsewhere. If not, the pine body is incredibly resonant and in combination with the maple neck gives a suprisingly long degree of sustain. The bridge allows you to set string specific height and intonation. There is a gut cut which many players will find a welcome addition.

Restringing is a breeze thanks to the open hole tuners. Measure an inch past the post, bend at 90 degrees, cut an inch out beyond the bend. Insert the end into the hole and tighten. Marvellous! The only negatives on this guitar are the lacquer on the neck will bother some. It is rather thick. The coil tap for the humbucker is essentially worthless unless you combine it with the mid pickup.

You will hear a lot of negativity online about the guitar being made in China. This is the same sort of sneering the Fender mexican plant recieved, followed by the now defunct Japanese plant. Don't let it put you off. As ever around this price point (sub £400!), you need to check out a few in person before buying one to be sure you don't get a lemon.

Mine is charcoal transparent. This is not the brown finish you might see from some pictures. It looks jet black, and the chrome hardware sets it off beautifully. Namm '15 just changed things again. Before it, buying the modern tele plus was a no-brainer if you wanted a tele with grunt for a low price. Now you have the standard Tele HH which replaces the blacktop range at a more wallet friendly cost. Things have never been more interesting for the tele chassis!