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I disconnected the treble bleed capacitor and now have some control on the tone. The pots read about 250k, well the tone pot did as there was too many wires soldered to the vol pot to check it. The control plate has the usual Tele three-way switch with a barrel switch cap plus a couple of nice push-on chrome domes. Under the hood are the somewhat dinky Chinese pots so I may replace those with some CTS pots later down the line. The neck puppy sounds really smooth. The bridge pickuper is quite edgy but isn't that the Tele tone? I don't know if the pickups have alnico mags or ceramics but I'm a bit partial to the new earth magnets anyway. I haven't done any pickup tweaking yet so the best is yet to come. The bridge saddles look to be chromed steel and are quite chunky. The deck is pressed steel and magnetic, another important ingredient for 'that' Tele sound, It comes standard as strings-through but there are holes drilled if you wished to go top loaded or mix and match.There was a bit of confusion as to what tree the body came from but I think it is Basswood. No not the stuff they make basses out of. The botanical name for basswood is Tilia which has excellent mid-range tones and a very warm and pronounced sound with very good sustain (so someone said). Whatever, it works for me. I'd describe the frets as medium jumbo narrow and out of the box will need a few hours of playing to take off the slight raspieness noticeable when bending. There is plenty of meat outside the two E strings so I think I will 'roll' the fretboard edges as they are quite square at the moment for my thumb-over style. It only comes in a rosy finger board. Tuners seem fine. The nut is only plastic but the string height was okay. I needed to file down the excess height of the nut but all the setup jobs have been pretty simple and nothing major for anyone with a Swiss Army Knife. The ivory finish (Olympic white for Fender folk) was floor-less, and the Frontier 615 is also available in Black, Candy Red and 3T Sunburst (which I didn't see). If you're into value-for-money then the Aria Frontier 615 is exceptional value. If you're not, then the 615 is a great Chinese-built Telecaster option.
Hear it here !!
Check on the vitals here !!
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