Ooh la la.. Cabronita

mmm? nice set

2012 and it’s the age of hot rod guitars. With an overabundance of electric guitar parts anything can be created, from a replica Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster with any pickups imaginable to a smelly old relic replicated in carefully placed dings. They call it aging, I call it fake.
Originally started by the guitar modders who hang out in the guitar forums it wasn’t long before the major producers of shiny guitars jumped in and created their own mod instruments and shipped them pre-reliced. With the recent release of the La Cabronita Fender Custom Shop Telecaster (at an outrageous price) Fender in their marketing wisdom has released not only a FSR American version but a MIM two pickup version without the ‘La’. The Cabronita name has created quite some controversy, try a Google. All I know is it can be very offensive to Spanish speaking woman??

Unfortunately like many new Fenders this model only shows its name in the online catalogue and doesn’t appear on the actual instrument so (by name) it won’t become a future collectible as it is ‘just another tele’. So what do we have here? Well, a pretty basic MIM Telecaster. Some time ago the modders had decided to install Gretsch Filtertron humbuckers in a tele with a hard-tail Stratocaster bridge and it is this that Fender have decided to release a container load of to Joe Public as a Cabronita Telecaster. The MIM Cabronita only comes in the one flavour but in three colours, a black and a 3T Sunburst in alder, plus a see-through vintage blonde in ash, at extra cost of course. The one I played was the ash model. Starting at the top it has a one piece maple neck and the usual Mexi standard hardware although this is not the same neck as used on the standards. This neck has 22 frets and feels slightly chunkier than the standard. So it would seem that someone from Fender has actually thought about it. It’s a nice piece (or pieces) of ash they have used for the slab, about the same weight as the standard alder tele that I compared it to. The usual tele pickguard, ashtray bridge and pickups aren’t used, instead are replaced by a pair of Gretsch look-a-likes, no not the genuine article or TV-Jones’s but 'Fidelitron Humbucking Pickups'. Or Fiddlietrons if you prefer. On the white guitar and the 3TS we have an unusual shaped single layer (thin) black pickguard with a white guard on the black guitar. The shape is similar to the old snake head pro-type tele very few have ever seen. To hold the strings on Fender have gone to the parts bin again and found a strat string-through hard-tail bridge. Actually, on closer look I see that this may well be a new bridge? In the cab’ specs they refer to cast saddles, this bridge has some rather light weight bendy steel saddles.

What’s left to do (or talk about) with this no-frills guitar other than to plug it in and hear what it has to say. First question, as this is what the modders were hoping for, does it sound like a Gretsch? Well the simple answer is no. These pickups are certainly grunty and to my ears sound like a cross between a full humbucker and a single coil, very much like a mini humbucker in character. Some people are going to be disappointed not having ‘that great Gretsch sound’? Hey!.. buy a Gretsch. The Cabronita does have its own sound, has heaps of power, is minimal, there isn’t even a tone control but it plays nice with its chunky maple handle. Perhaps it should have stayed in the realm of the modders and not become a mainstream Fender. It makes you wonder.

Thanks to me mates at KC's Rockshop for the twang time.