Ever just cruise the Fender Japan site and dream?
Do you ever just cruise the Fender Japan website and dream? Cos I sure do…
Click each pic for more info.
Fender Custom Shop 2013 Custom Collection
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (Dec. 27, 2012) — The Fender Custom Shop’s 2013 Custom Collection presents some of its most sophisticated and meticulously crafted product offerings to date, including eight guitars and two basses. The most distinctive features of each individual model are listed below:
2013 Custom Deluxe Stratocaster®
- Okume body with access heel and AAA flame maple veneer top in Faded Three-Color Sunburst, Candy Yellow, or Ebony Trans
- Urethane-finished AAA flame maple neck with a mid-’60s oval “C” back shape
- Dark rosewood or one-piece maple fretboard with 22 medium jumbo frets
- Custom Shop Fat ’50s pickups with five-way pickup switch and modern Strat® wiring
- Chrome hardware with pearl button tuners Continue reading
Fender Richie Kotzen Tele gets worldwide release
Woo! One of my dream guitars is now going to be made available to the whole world (it’s currently only offered in certain markets, y’see). As just posted on Richie Kotzen’s Facebook:
“Fender Guitars will be selling Richie Kotzen’s signature model telecaster GLOBALLY starting this January… The guitar was previously only available in Japan and Europe… Good news for those interested parties in North and South America!”
Fender unveils Foo Fighters sigs
So Foo Fighters are entering an extended hiatus (how extended? Nobody knows!) but that doesn’t mean you can’t rock out with their signature axes. Lead guitarist Chris Shiflett and bass player Nate Mendel have both got sweet new Fender signature instruments. Check ‘em out!
PRESS RELEASE
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (Oct. 1, 2012) — Through their monster work with the Foo Fighters, lead guitarist Chris Shiflett and bass player Nate Mendel have helped shape the sound of modern alternative rock. Fender now honors them and their distinctive sounds with the new Chris Shiflett Signature Telecaster® Deluxe and the Nate Mendel P Bass®.
Shiflett’s abiding love for Telecasters and for huge humbucking sound now comes together in one kickass new instrument with his name on it–the Chris Shiflett Signature Telecaster Deluxe. Eminently affordable and modeled closely on Shiflettt’s favorite ’72 Tele Deluxe, it features a striking Arctic White finish, a four-ply white pearl pickguard, a roaring pair of new custom-designed high-output humbucking pickups, a 12″-radius rosewood fingerboard for easy bends with low action, custom-stenciled hard-shell case, and Shiflett’s signature on the headstock.
REVIEW: Fret-King JD
Jerry Donahue is an almost unnaturally talented guitarist capable of dizzying feats of technique and melody. A few other companies (Fender and Peavey) have offered Jerry Donahue artist models in the past, and they were fine instruments. But Donahue says his new Fret-King trumps them all. Let’s check it out and see if he’s speaking the truth. Continue reading
New Fender American Vintage Series guitars!
Everything’s better when it’s paisley
Whoa! Check out this Fender Factory Special Run Black Paisley Telecaster. I think I kinda really need this.
I’m just posting this here so I can gaze at it…
Simply looking at this guitar makes me feel like this:
REVIEW: Maton MS T BYRD
Australian manufacturer Maton is perhaps best known internationally for their stunning acoustic guitars, which are regularly seen in the hands of one mr. Tommy Emmanuel. But Maton has a long history of great electric guitars too, such as the BB and Mastersound series, and some really funky vintage models. Even so, the MS T BYRD is a fairly unusual guitar for Maton to make. It seems to bring together a few disparate but equally historic elements: design cues from the Maton Mastersound and classic Tele-style guitars, along with an even earlier pickup design and a more modern-feeling fretboard adapted to current playing styles.
So, the most obvious marriage visible in the MS T BYRD is that of the Mastersound and the Telecaster. The Mastersound angle is covered by the curvaceous body shape, as well as a semi-hollow design which incorporates a sexy soundhole on the bass side body bout. The biggest giveaways as to the latter are the dot-inlay maple fretboard, the bridge, the single coil pickup and the controls.
REVIEW: DiMarzio Area T 615
The Fender Telecaster was the first production-line solidbody electric guitar, and Leo and co got it pretty much right the first time around. The Telecaster’s design is like a perfect storm of tone: the chunky body and the bolt-on neck joint encourage a particular kind of string energy transfer that retains a great deal of treble, and this gives the Tele its legendary ring. But there are many different approaches to the Tele tone. Some players need to tame the treble a bit, some wish to emphasise it, some require lower output, some want lower noise, and some want higher output. The DiMarzio Area T 615 is aimed at modern country players who need to retain the classic Tele tone but who need something a little more finely tuned for overdrive sounds as well as cleans. These players need the true Tele twang, but they also need solid, punchy tones for the rockier styles that have progressively crept into modern country.
The hum-cancelling DiMarzio Area T 615 is built with an Alnico 2 magnet. It has an output of 200 mV and a DC resistance of 7.93 Kohm. This puts it above the vintage-toned Area T bridge (175 Kohm) and below the heftier Area Hot T Bridge (238 Kohm).
Hi! I'm Peter Hodgson. I write for Gibson.com, Australian Guitar, Australian Musician, Mixdown Magazine (including my instructional column, 'Unleash Your Inner Rock God,' which has been running since 2007), Blunt, Beat (including their weekly hard rock/metal column Crunch) and The Brag. And I'm Assistant Social Coordinator with Seymour Duncan.
I've been playing guitar since I was 8 years old, and I've been writing for magazines since I was 18. I've also worked as a guitar teacher (up to 50 students a week), a setup tech, a newspaper editor, and I've also dabbled in radio a little bit. I live in Melbourne, Australia, and my hobbies include drinking way too much coffee, and eating way too much Mexican food.
You can check out my guitar playing at Bandcamp or on YouTube, and feel free to email me at iheartguitarblog@gmail.com