> The real winner here, I think, is the Telecaster.
I don't know about this. Most "telecasters" I see in the wild are actually telecaster-shaped guitars with pretty much everything else altered.
I don't know about this. Most "telecasters" I see in the wild are actually telecaster-shaped guitars with pretty much everything else altered.
Given how hugely inconsistent the early Teles were, it's hard to definitively say what a "real" Tele ought to be like. The Blackguard necks were all shaped by hand, with the only commonality being a thickness at the 12th fret of about 1". There are a huge range of profiles, thicknesses and fingerboard radii on vintage Teles. They used whatever body woods were cheap - ash, alder, poplar and pine, often switching woods within the same year. The Tele has always been a crude, cheap working man's guitar, so I see no sense in being a purist about what is fundamentally a mongrel.
To illustrate my point: https://dk1xgl0d43mu1.cloudfront.net/user_files/esp/product_...
The majority of Teles I've seen are like this. Hard to say it "stood the test of time" if there's no agreed upon definition of it.
Most Teles made by Fender/Squier and most of their copiers follow this template. They're not just metal-oriented guitars with a Tele shape.
https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/20164-mod-garage-befo...
In all the years I've played I've just never really had any strong desire to own one.
It's worth bearing in mind that the Telecaster was designed for the heavy flatwound or pure nickel strings that were the norm in the 50s. A modern light gauge set of nickel-plated roundwound strings will sound exceptionally bright on a Tele. A plain third string won't intonate properly on a three-saddle bridge either.
Another solution is to use a hotter bridge pickup (which will be necessarily darker), and replace the neck pickup with, heck, almost anything else.
Basically, their simple construction makes them as simple to modify; when you pick up a Telecaster in the gig shop, you’re just getting started; tuning it to your preference is an ongoing process some people take lots of pleasure in. (Whereas others, as with Land Rovers, curmudgeonly quip that it is a pity Fender didn’t just get it right in the first place; the latter group are IMHO missing the point. :))