My cousin let me keep his Fender Telecaster as well as his Fender Strat for over a year and I was able to use and abuse his guitars that entire time. His Fender Telecaster was made in Japan. I did a little research and it’s serial number indicates that it was made sometime in the late 1980’s. This Fender Telecaster has a brownish yellow color and has a black pick guard. Its color probably darkened due to age but I’m not really sure.
The Fender Telecaster has 21 frets, two single
coil pickups, two control knobs for master volume and master tone, and a 3-position pickup selector lever. It has the traditional Fender Telecaster bridge where the strings are mounted through body. The neck pickup is a “lipstick” single coil while the bridge pickup is placed diagonally on the bridge plate.
This Fender Telecaster has that bright sound that all Telecasters have when using the bridge pickup. I think this brightness in tone can be attributed to the bridge plate where the bridge and bridge pickup is placed on. Since the bridge plate is made of metal, it gives makes the tone sharper and brighter as the the sound vibrating from the strings hits this relatively bigger metal surface and since most guitars don’t have a metal bridge plate, this bright sound is unique to the Telecaster.
The bridge pickup is pretty warm but as I’ve said the Telecaster’s sound is pretty unique so its warmth in tone still has that twang of brightness. The single coil pickups, however, aren’t as heavy as humbuckers if played with lots of distortion but with a ...
