Fenders and more Fenders

The new breed.

Fender are releasing new guitars by the dozens. Here are just a few I had a play on today down at KC's Rockshop. The nice Candy Apple Red Strat and the Surf Green jobs in the picture are the brand new for 2012 Vintage Modified Surf Stratocasters by Squier. These are made in Indonesia and not of the best quality I've seen from this factory. The Candy paint was rather shallow on the red one and the surf green one was pretty insipid. Tepid you might say.
The rosy fingerboards felt like a 7.5 inch radius but the specs seem to think it's a  9.5" modern radius however I could be wrong. The lipstick chrome  single coil pickups were rather nothing and looked completely wrong on a Strat. The good thing is they're standard Strat pickup size so if you didn't like the look or the thin sound they could be easily replaced. The very white pearl pickguard looks a little cheesy and the basswood body was quite heavy. This is an inexpensive guitar and you can tell. There are certainly other Squier options much better than the Surf Stratocaster, even if you can't swim.
Next in the line (of fire) is the Modern Player Jaguar. This one is out of China, presumably from the same factory as the Classic Vibe series. This is another one of those 'shouldn't have the Fender name' instruments. It feels quite nice as did the Maurder the other week but this is one that really got away unnoticed. The three way pickup selector switch was faulty and the neck pickup was intermittent due to the dodgy switch. From experience these Totalitarian made switches are unfixable so to anyone buying this guitar the first thing to modify on it would be to replace the switch with a real one, it will only let you down big-time as one did me once (but only once). The Chinese hardware was passable though I wish they would check the chrome pieces for scuff marks when the assembler's get to them. This one had scuff marks that wouldn't polish out on both the stop tail piece and the jack cup. To top off the quality control issues there was a stain either from the poly or some kind of water mark that had been preserved forever on the back of the instrument. This was only NOT noticeable in certain lights at certain angles. Bad bad bad. The first generation instruments Fender commissioned from this Chinese factory, the Classic Vibes, were of brilliant quality. Are the cracks starting to show now the economic squeeze is on?
Next is another Modern Player, the Telecaster Thinline Deluxe. This for me was the pick of the bunch for playability and it just sounded good. The selector switch worked okay in this but I would still be replacing it. The P90's rocked as P90's do though a little but of tweaking wouldn't go a miss to balance out the neck and bridge pickups. The neck is the 50's Classic Vibe Tele neck which felt very nice. The black skirted amp-style knobs looked a bit strange on the slightly off-white pickguard as did the black P90's but the semi hollow body in the three colour sunburst gave this instrument class. Compared to it's cousin, the P90 equipped Jag; the Thinline Deluxe was five star.
Next is the Squier Vintage Modified Jazzmaster. These are really last years new release but too good to not be included in this little guitar day. With the exception of the rip-off Strat jack socket cup this is a very original Fender design. The Seymor Duncan designed Jazzmaster singles are fat fat fat and have wonderful tone. If you're thinking 60's Jazzmaster then the VM is nothing like it in looks or sound. The vintage tinted one piece maple neck is a close match to the buttery body. It is an offset so while you may love the offset body look they don't sit well on the thigh during sit down play but hang it around your neck and this is one cool guitar. The bridge is probably it's weakest point with its six cast bridge pieces but as it's a fixed design (and not a trem) and the strings are back loaded (and not through bodied) heavier gauge strings will work well on this instrument. I'd say probably the weakest point is that it has one of 'those' switches and possibly the wrong value pots as backing off the volume a notch really steals the tone from the pickups. Perhaps a treble bleed cap could fix it? As nice as the dual concentric controls are, volume on the inside with a spring loaded notch in the stepped tone control around the outside, I would be replacing these with a single volume and tone control of a more suitable value and a couple of chrome domes. If I didn't already have an offset this would be mine. Get one now as I don't think they will be around much longer, Fender have just released this same guitar with a Tele body and bridge pickup set up. The VM Jazzmaster has originality but the Tele version looks a little weird.
Yep there will be a market for the lipstick Strat as I'm sure Fender know their market. Besides, it's not aimed at an old Fender dag like myself. The P90 Jag wasn't quite there, The P90 Thinline was a hot little player and the VM Jazzmaster has the Fender 'it' which unfortunately not too many players have picked up on.

Thanks to my friends at KC's for the opportunity to try these new breed Fenders.