This is a brand new Fender® Road Worn Player Telecaster® that we've modified with some very nice upgrades, which are detailed below. All original parts are included in the sale. The guitar weighs 7.15 pounds. The Road Worn® Player model is designed to mimic an old guitar that's been modified over the years, and incorporates what Fender believes are either popular or desirable changes to the vintage configuration. These guitars differ from the original Road Worn® guitars in several ways: - 9.5" fretboard radius, rather than 7.25", to accommodate lower action
- Truss rod adjustment at the headstock, for convenient neck adjustments
- Sealed tuners, rather than the original Kluson-style tuners
- PAF-style humbucker neck pickup
- 6-saddle bridge for proper intonation
- Reversed control plate
Some of these changes provide a tangible benefit, like the truss rod adjustment, and the flatter radius (assuming you like low action, and aren't in love with the vintage 7.25" radius). Others are purely a personal-preference thing, like the sealed tuners and the reversed control plate. In case you're wondering, the reversed control plate is a moderately-popular option, the purpose of which is to move the volume control closer to the picking hand (for volume swells, etc), and the switch further away (so that it's not inadvertently switched during playing). One thing that cannot be disputed is the fatness of the neck humbucker. While the guitar ships from Fender with a U.S. made Duncan '59 neck humbucker, and a Fender Tex-Mex bridge, Fender installs a 3-way switch that provides no split-humbucker tones. This is at least partly because Fender has no suitable switch for this. But many people who have tried split humbuckers in guitars find them not to be that cool. This is because half of a traditional humbucker yields a fairly weak coil, as compared to a normal Strat or Tele single coil. So we've replaced the neck humbucker with a Lindy Fralin Unbucker neck pickup, which has a strong coil and a weak coil. We've also installed one of our ToneShaper switching systems, so that the humbucker may be split. When you split an Unbucker, the strong coil remains on, which does a better job of mimicking a traditional Tele neck pickup. You can view the videos below and determine for yourself whether the split-humbucker sounds good. We've also replaced the bridge pickup with a Fralin Blues Special pickup that complements the Unbucker perfectly. And the ToneShaper has a feature where it can change the way the volume pot loads the circuit, so that it can be optimized for the various switch positions. Here is the switching configuration for this guitar: Position 5: neck pickup (humbucking), 500k volume pot
Position 4: neck pickup (split), 250k volume pot
Position 3: neck pickup (humbucking) + bridge pickup, 250k volume pot
Position 2: neck pickup (split) + bridge pickup, 250k volume pot
Position 1: bridge pickup, 250k volume pot As you can see, there is lots of tonal variety here, and the tones are good! This guitar cannot ship internationally. Sorry! | | | | Video of actual guitar for sale | Video of similar guitar, more ToneShaper detail | | | | | Click images below for larger versions |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | |