101-T1 – A Telecaster Fit For a King!

Here’s another little guitar – a Telecaster which I re-finished – re-styled with an Elvis Presley twist (don’t we all love Elvis deep down? – hmm:) and it not only looks fun – but it plays beautifully. I now could not tell the difference between playing this and playing a £999 custom-shop Fender Telecaster.

It makes me wonder sometimes what you do pay for with a super-expensive guitar. Whilst the custom-shop ones can be very swanky parts and are well polished and setup – i’m not 100% convinced we really need to spend 1K to get a great playing and sounding guitar.

It’s true some guitars have necks and bodies that ‘fight’ each other a little bit and don’t sound interesting – but equally I’ve played top-of-the-line mahogany body hand-made guitars that sound dead as do-dos! I think IMHO the key is to look for character and playability as all guitars have their own personalities and sounds – sometimes a cheaper one will sound much better than an expensive one. You’ve got to sit down and play the thing!

The neck and frets…

OK down to business – the playability. The fretboard is now silky smooth and the frets are rounded too as I like them so they don’t wear out my inside fingers – the smoothest of all my guitars and the sound is bouncy and bright as you’d expect from a telecaster and super-fast to play as I lowered the action – I found Telecasters are great for this.