"From vintage-style body colors to chunky vintage necks and more, the Classic series captures the essence of old-school Fender, with the options of supercharged circuitry and mods of a true 21st-century instrument."
My History With the Tele Deluxe
As I sit down to play my Fender Telecaster (pictured above), I realize that it's a little shitty to want another Telecaster. I mean, it's the same guitar, right? Right? Right? WRONG.
The Telecaster Deluxe is a perfect guitar, but its $799.99 price tag has kept me from buying one. At this point the guitar remains a note in my phone and on my computer, and its name has to be written dozens of times throughout my Notes apps. Writing "Telecaster Deluxe" and other variations of its name and rewriting it over and over gives me some weird sense of comfort, like I know that I'll obtain one eventually. It's kind of the same feeling as carrying something around a store and putting it back before you leave. Not really, but in some weird way it is.
I first fell in love with the Telecaster Deluxe when I noticed one of my favorite musicians, Jeff Rosenstock, playing one at a show of his once. I thought it looked like the perfect Telecaster/Stratocaster mix (okay, I mostly just thought that it looked really cool), but I didn't know what exact guitar it was until I read an interview with him on Gear Metropolis, a great site for gear nerds who are interested in what their favorite artists play. I instantly looked it up to find that many of my favorite artists use the same guitar, like both guitarists in Signals Midwest (though looking at it more closely, it looks like Max Stern's headstock looks slightly different, so it might not be the exact same thing. Whoops).
The second I read that article on Gear Metropolis, I spent the next few hours searching for the guitar on sites like Reverb and Sweetwater to find out some prices for it. I was hooked from that point on.
The Specs
The Tele Deluxe features "dual Fender Wide Range humbucking pickups" (Fender) that work to cut out interference, thus stopping any annoying buzz/hum that comes from single coil pickups, which is a pretty big problem with my current Telecaster, a standard Telecaster. The hum really gets in the way of recordings because the noise is constant. While I could always just buy humbucking pickups for my current Tele, the Deluxe features much more than its wonderful pickups.
As opposed to my current Telecaster's measly two knobs, one being a tone knob and the other volume, the Tele Deluxe has four knobs! Woohoo! This means that it has a much more customizable sound, which is super cool and allows for so much more variation in sound. Add the pickup switch into the equation and the tone possibilities are endless. The pickup switch allows for the guitar to produce sound through either pickup, or through both. Thus, the tone knobs (there is a volume knob and tone knob for each pickup) allows the player to fine-tune each pickup's sound to create their own.
One of my favorite parts about the Tele Deluxe is its headstock. It features a Stratocaster headstock, which is something that I missed when I first bought my current Tele. I began playing guitar on my dad's Stratocaster, and I always loved the look of it, particularly the headstock. So when I discovered that I preferred a Tele's sound, I was kinda bummed about their weird looking headstocks; let's be honest, a major of a guitar's appeal is its looks. Fast forward to my finding out that I could get a Tele with a Strat headstock; I don't think I've been happier about something gear related, as silly as it is. It just further proved that the Tele Deluxe is the ideal guitar for me.
In Closing
The Telecaster Deluxe is a beautiful piece of equipment, and I know that one day I'll replace my current Tele with one. But until then, I'll have to deal with daydreaming about owning one and hunting for a relatively cheap one until I inevitably decide that I can no longer go on without it. After writing this, that time may come sooner rather than later.
"Classic Series '72 Telecaster® Deluxe." Classic Series '72 Telecaster® Deluxe. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2015.
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