started with an electric American Professional
Tele neck and modified it for this guitar. The
woods were changed to mahogany with a
streaked ebony fretboard, and we changed
the fretboard radius to 12” to help both electric
and acoustic players feel at home. Specs and
dimensions are subjective, but a great feel is a
great feel – and we knew as soon as we strung-
up the first prototype we had the neck just right.
[WM] One of the topics that keeps coming
in the conversations with people like yourself
and Max Gutnik, is that Fender is aware that
the people who will shape the sound of where
Brian Swerdfeger
the guitar goes next may not know that Eric
Clapton was the guitar player in Cream. That’s
exciting and a bit scary at the same time. How
do you approach balancing the ‘tried and true’
with the ‘all things new’ to find the sweet spot
for the marketplace?
[Brian] I’m a firm believer in the power of
inspiration. If that comes from ‘tried and true’
that’s great. But in my world, more often than
not, it comes from ‘all things new’. We believe
if we can inspire players to play more guitar,
then we’re doing our part of the equation. More
players, playing more music for themselves and
others is an amazing thing. Music styles and
genres are blurring more than ever, and our hope
was to create an instrument to not only please
the current generations of players, but to fuel
the next. Acoustic guitars have a lot of qualities
that draw artists in - but sometimes artists are
stuck playing just one guitar per song. They
can’t do multiple instrument changes on stage
or have back-up guitarists play different guitars/
parts throughout a song. The Fender American
Acoustasonic Telecaster (yes, it’s an acoustic
AND an electric guitar) changes all of that, by
allowing artists to change the tonal qualities of
their guitar mid-song. It offers multiple guitar
voices in one.
[WM] If there was ever a guitar that looked like
it was designed with the House of Worship in
mind, this would probably be it. What do you
think Worship musicians will love most about
these guitars?
January 2019
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