SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS ON THE WIRE sound like faint praise until one considers how many pickup designs over the years have chased output, noise reduction, or versatility at the expense of the qualities that made the instrument distinctive in the first place.
Of course, Telecaster players have never relied on the pickup selector alone. The volume knob has always been part of the instrument’ s vocabulary. Roll it back slightly for rhythm work, bring it forward for a lead line, then settle somewhere in between. The catch is that lowering the volume often removes some of the brightness along with it. Fender addresses that here with a treble bleed circuit, a small electronic addition that allows more of the guitar’ s highend detail to remain intact as the volume is reduced.
The push-push tone control is another welcome feature. Telecaster owners were wiring their pickups in series long before Fender offered the option from the factory. The modification produces a thicker, louder voice with a stronger midrange presence than traditional parallel wiring. Earlier generations often reached that sound with a soldering iron. Here it appears with the press of a knob.
Bridge design has generated arguments of its own. Players who prefer traditional throughbody stringing can still use it. Players who favor the feel of a top-loader can string the guitar that way instead. A disagreement that began in the late 1950s remains unresolved, though it no longer requires separate instruments.
The three-saddle bridge has always involved a compromise. Each saddle supports two strings, contributing to the feel and response that became part of the Telecaster’ s character while making precise intonation more difficult than on later six-saddle designs. Players have argued over the tradeoff for decades. Some replaced the bridge; others considered the compromise inseparable from the instrument itself.
What often gets overlooked in those discussions is the role of the brass barrel saddles themselves. Much of what players associate with classic Telecaster response may owe more to those saddles than to the string-through-body design that frequently receives the
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