Fender Nashville Power Telecaster ( w/ Fishman Bridge ) Reviews 4

Purchased it used at Guitar Center with a Korean Hamer Archtop as a trade.

First off, it has incredible flexibility with the four pickups. It has the usual two Tele pickups (lipstic at the neck and the bridge pickup), but then it sandwhiches a tex mex Strat pickup in the middle. The bridge is made by Fishman and has little piezo pickups in each saddle. It comes with a five way switch, and a knob which adjusts the volume of the piezo pickups (which are SUPPOSED to give it an acoustic tone). Either play with just the piezo pickups, or blend them in with whatever selection of the others you choose. Great body construction, easy playable fretboard, but the actual pickguard itself is kind of turned up at the edges where it meets the neck. Maybe that's why it was traded in at Guitar Center (I bough it used). That doesn't affect the playability of it at all, and it's only noticeable if you're looking for it. The sunburst finish matched with the redish shell colored pickguard looks fantastic both in it's case, on the guitar stand, and when you're playing it. The sound of the guitar itself (with the normal fender pickups) is very nice and very flexible (5 pickup combo selections). I play primarily in my church worship team, and it lends itself very nicely to warm ballad leads, as well as a good overdriven sound on leads on certain songs. Combined with my Boss SD-1, it sounds fantastic, as long as the overdrive is turned set somewhat on the low side on the pedal. Maybe this is only because of the guitar/pedal combination, but when I bring up the overdrive level on the pedal, it starts to get sort of muddy. Not extremely so, but to my ears it does. All-in-all, it's a very very versitile guitar, though.

As for the Fishman Power Bridge, it's just not very REAL sounding. No acoustic simulator I've ever played really does, and I'm sure that having actual electric strings on the guitar contributes to the fake sounding "acoustic" sound. It's extremely tinny. I have relatively light guage strings on right now, and I'm hoping that maybe a heavier guage will change that some. Possibly changing the EQ on your effects pedal will remedy this some, but all-in-all, I'm not impressed. It's not a reason to not buy the guitar, but it's just not going to sound like an acoustic. After all, it IS an electric...

Very good quality Fender construction. The strap buttons were a little loose on the guitar, and when I tried to tighten them in, I found that the threads had been basically stripped out of the guitar. I had to use slightly larger screws to get the buttons to stay on firmly. I'm assuming that this was due to the poor handling of the first owner, but I'll never know for sure...

Great versitile Tele. Still maintains the basic Tele sound while giving you the option of the Strat tex-mex pickup. Not a bad purchase, and I'll probably keep it for a while...

Ryan from Seattle rated this unit 4 on 2002-10-30.

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