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Thread: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

  1. #51

    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    This ebay dealer has been selling them over the last two days-- three to my count. I bought one! There is still one for sale I think

    https://www.ebay.com/usr/dextermusic...p2047675.l2559

  2. #52

    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    Congratulations gretschbigsby. Hope you enjoy. What color?

    You're only the 5th Cafe member to say you got one. There were over a hundred resplies to the announcement of the Tenor Tele at the NAMM show thread, but thus far few purchases. The dot at the nineth fret must be the deal breaker?

    Happy Holidays!
    Huck

  3. #53

    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    Quote Originally Posted by Huck View Post
    There were over a hundred resplies to the announcement of the Tenor Tele at the NAMM show thread, but thus far few purchases. The dot at the nineth fret must be the deal breaker?
    Availability has been sketchy at best, which may be off-putting to some. In an effort to coerce Fender to move the fret marker I'd say yes to it being a deal-breaker but the reality is my "tenor" is a 6-string guitar tuned to 5ths so I've learned to adapt. That said, If I'm going to put out the coin for a "real" tenor I'd be hard pressed to pony up for something that's going to annoy me like the misplaced fret marker does.

    The deal breaker for me is that it is a tele. I don't like tele's. I started playing at a time when "real" guitar players didn't play telecasters. They were the domain of fake cowboys playing bad country music. I know that's changed over the years, but old habits die hard . I do applaud Fender for nailing the Tenor Tele - it's an excellently executed tenor Telecaster that I'm sure it will have great appeal to those that don't mind telecasters. Now it's time to move on to the Tenor Strat and the short-scale Tenor Jaguar (with the fret marker at the 10th) - those are what I'm waiting for.

    Quote Originally Posted by Huck View Post
    Happy Holidays!
    Same to you and everyone at the Cafe!
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  4. #54

    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    Quote Originally Posted by creebobby View Post
    I started a Facebook group for Tenor Tele owners, if anyone is interested.
    Hi Jacob,

    I visited your Facebook page. Your guitar looks great with the brass saddle modification. I really like it! In my opinion it really improves on the look of the guitar. Can you please comment on the effect(s) it had?

    After you put on the single ply bakelite pickguard, it is going to look classic.

    Also, if you build a Tenor Esquire, please share pictures. I will be envious.

    Thanks,
    Huck

  5. #55
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    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    New to this forum, I'm based in Germany and have placed an order for the Lake Placid Blue version by Thomann in August. As for many of you, I received all possible tentative delivery dates without any confirmation. I was first told in September, then November, then 'unknown delivery date'. Frustrating, but Thomann is only forwarding the scarce information at their disposal. I then tried contacting Fender, got a message from a nice fellow telling me that I should keep checking their website for any changes. So, I've been eagerly connecting to their webpage on an almost daily basis, only to get further frustrated… I'm glad I found this group where I have found the most interesting and relevant information about my coveted new toy. Cheers from Berlin!!!!!

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  7. #56
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    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    Being late to the party, I didn't start looking for one until a month or so ago. By that time the dealers had stopped taking orders and those I spoke with had no interest in trying to get one and referred me to contact Fender directly. This seems like a strange way to do business, but maybe it has something to do with Fender carrying so much debt. Fender contacted me a few days after I got on their email list, so I ordered one in butterscotch straightaway and it arrived Friday.

    I surely am a Telecaster guy, as the list of great players seems endless and it's the guitar that started the whole thing. Yes, it's more like a pickup truck than sports car, but one with light weight ash body and good pickups can get you into a groove and give tone like nothing else can (James Burton - red or paisley Tele, Don Rich, Roy Buchanan, Danny Gatton, Brent Mason, etc.). A heavy Tele is a totally different animal that sounds really hard to me, instead of the pop and resonance with an amazing tonal spectrum, so it's understandable why that sound isn't appealing to many. Like mandolin, this 4 string is just the ticket for my trigger finger injury. My expectations are not that of a custom shop number, but a 5 bill MIM player, so no anticipointment this time out.

    The butterscotch shows some wood grain and is my second favorite Fender color, after the mid-late '50's blonde with white pick guard. There was once a '52 reissue in the house and this number doesn't really compare. The U shape neck works with this narrow neck and the neck PU is aligned under the strings better than the bridge PU. The string spacing is odd, with too much space at the sides of the neck, so it will likely get a new nut someday. The saddles could've been spaced better and don't allow the strings to be moved, so some old school Strat saddles may find their way replace them. The 9th fret position marker is not a good thing. The peg head is disproportionately small to the body size. The tuner spindles are too tall and the string holes are too high, but they seem functional so far and would benefit from a string tree. I would've liked to see a scale in the neighborhood of 20". The alder body has nice grain, is a bit thinner than a real Tele (more like a G&L ASAT), and gives its good overall balance and weight.

    So, all this stuff seemed to jump off the computer screen at me, and there were no surprises. Even tho Fender chose not to get it right, it's still worth it to me and is a good companion to their Mandostrat. To have everything done the way I'd like would require a custom build. Being what it is, it's a lot of fun to mess with and seems to beg to be chicken picked. There's been great music played on lesser axes, that's for sure.

    It didn't take long to set up...nut filing, truss rod adjusting, restringing to octave mandolin pitch, and setting intonation. But I expected this and still like it and overall am satisfied enough.

    My guess is that Fender will make them as long as they sell enough, like the Mandostrat. So patience, 5 bills and persistence will eventually pay off.
    Last edited by dan in va; Dec-22-2019 at 5:04pm.

  8. #57

    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    Quote Originally Posted by dan in va View Post
    By that time the dealers had stopped taking orders and those I spoke with had no interest in trying to get one and referred me to contact Fender directly. This seems like a strange way to do business, but maybe it has something to do with Fender carrying so much debt.
    The whole industry is saddled with debt. The bigger problem for dealers, and one of the big causes of Fender's debt, is channel stuffing - i.e. you have to continually take new product whether you can sell them or not and you can't discount your dead inventory or you lose your ability to carry the franchise. Fender keeps making guitars that the dealers can't move which drives them out of business. Fender isn't the only one guilty of this as it applies to Gibson, PRS and others. My respect goes to Rickenbacker who only make product to order. That means they constantly have a backorder log, but dealers get what they want and can sell. Since Fender released this as a different product line, dealers can choose to carry them or not if they qualify, but I'm sure many of them don't have a clue what a tenor is anyway. It's a niche market at best.

    Quote Originally Posted by dan in va View Post
    I surely am a Telecaster guy, as the list of great players seems endless and it's the guitar that started the whole thing. Yes, it's more like a pickup truck than sports car, ... (James Burton - red or paisley Tele, Don Rich, Roy Buchanan, Danny Gatton, Brent Mason, etc.).
    Not sure how old you are but for me coming up in the 50s and 60s things were quite a bit different than today. There was a time when all there was was telecasters so if you wanted to play, that's what you played. There was also an overwhelming amount of really bad country music. Since that's about all that was playing on TV and radio, if you wanted a career in music you got a tele and a cowboy hat or you didn't play, hence all the fake cowboys.

    All the players you've noted are primarily country players - and good ones at that if you like country music. All the teles I've seen Mason, who is no slouch, play have humbuckers so they really don't count. John 5 also plays telecaster-shaped guitars. In an interview he noted the same fake cowboys on radio and TV playing teles as leading him to believe that was the only type of guitar there was, but his are only a telecaster in shape.

    Rock and roll changed things up. Single-coil tones were/are anemic for that type of music, which is where I'm coming from, and by the time you have your amp cranked to the point of distortion the single-coil hum is so overwhelming it ruins the vibe.

    Like I said, if you're into country and that country-twang-thang, Fender pretty much nailed it with the Tenor Tele. If you're doing rock and roll and etc. the usual telecaster problems apply to the tenor tele.
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  9. #58

    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    Quote Originally Posted by Huck View Post
    Congratulations gretschbigsby. Hope you enjoy. What color?
    Lake Placid Blue. They had Butterscotch, but I've always been a sucker for the custom colors.

    Had an interesting conversation with the store. He said that the alternative reality Fenders sit on the wall forever but that they can't keep the tenors in stock-- he has more coming in after the new year in red. Interestingly, some of the coworkers wondered about why he was ordering so many tenors, thinking that they would be hard to sell, but he has been proved prophetic!

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  11. #59
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    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    Verne - My teen years were in the '70's. You likely know most of this stuff, but this is where I'm coming from. After missing the country you speak of and my not getting the revelation until the '80's and '90's, I avoided lots of stuff and went straight to what still pulls my trigger today. Some wonderful local players directed my ears in tone and taste, and I would always go see Danny Gatton play when he came to town.

    Danny played so many kinds of music so well and I started paying attention to the stuff he liked and was surprised to enjoy the picking of "Thumbs" Carlisle and the great Western swing players; and his stint with Roger Miller opened another door. His rockabilly got my attention first, but then he would take off on a tune and I would hear parts of unrelated tunes mixed in, such as "Goldrush" and the theme form "Dragnet" and it all worked so well. Then there he was doing Buddy Holly in New Orleans style and the first Southern Rock that I ever liked. Danny and Roy Buchanan were good friends and also said he got a lot of stuff from James Burton - another door got opened. And he was actually best live.

    I guess it was Michael Lewis that first opened up my ears to good Tele tones. As a teenager, he played rhythm guitar for Chuck Berry on a tour with the Rolling Stones. It turns out that Chuck is a fine country player that never recorded country, and he often played country licks with a rock beat, crossing over between major and minor pentatonic scales. Mike taught me a whole lot of stuff about music when he had the music store in town. Among other things, he's a good rockabilly upright bassman and pedal steel player. He passed the store onto another knowledgeable, fine old school guitarist before leaving town to take a job with Fender and graduating from phone sales to VP. The early reissue Strats and Teles sounded so good thru his tweed Deluxe and outboard reverb unit...gotta love that Tele combination.

    I've always liked Ricky Skaggs for bluegrass, so he got my attention later when his recording contract only let him play country for those years. Turns out that "Picky Ricky" is particular about stuff like amps, mic's and such. His Brit Tele player, Ray Flacke also got my attention.

    James Burton did a lot of studio work for lots of different singers; from Sinatra to Haggard to Emmylou Harris' Hot Band. Having not listening to Merle much, I figured that James knew what he was talking about when he mentioned how Merle wrote so many beautiful melodies. Yep, how true. The original chicken picker.

    Brent Mason. Yeah, he plays other guitars now, but I just can't seem to get past the first 6 or so Alan Jackson ablums when he used that gray Tele with the Tele style bridge, Strat middle and mini HB in the neck. And most of those tones that drive my ears crazy involve the switch pointing toward the bridge. My favorite chicken picker.

    All this to say that somehow I bypassed the unappealing cliche Tele picking in country and got hooked up with what I think is really good twangy guitar. There's a robust, popping sound with amazing highs. This Tenor Tele is the closest 4 string thing commercially available that gives a nod to a decent Telecaster...at least that I can afford.(!)

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  13. #60

    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    dan in va - I hear you and thanks for sharing.

    My relatives had farms when I was growing up and I spent my summers there so I know what a "real" cowboy is having rode horses and corralled and milked lots of cattle - the stuff on TV and radio was nowhere near reality which is prolly a big reason for my distaste.

    The neat thing about music, and guitars and mandolins, is there's something for everyone. I lean towards fusion, jazz, prog rock and the such. My current listening is bands like Porcupine Tree, A Perfect Circle and Tool which tend to be about as far away from country as you can get. Mike Stern, a great fusion jazz player, plays a signature tele-shaped Yamaha, but it has humbuckers so it's another of those telecaster-shaped objects.

    While it may not come across as such, I readily admit to having owned and loved a telecaster. I had a Fender Aerodyne Telecaster for quite a number of years. To me it fixed most of the things I didn't like about teles - comfort cut body, rocking P90 neck pickup and great neck profile (teles tend to be baseball bats). It was a great guitar but I moved it along as it just didn't get the play time it deserved.

    Click image for larger version. 

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    I'm so happy for everyone who has snagged and are enjoying their Tenor Teles. For me, I'll pass until a tenor comes along that presses all my buttons.
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  14. #61
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    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    Verne - I appreciate your post and the direction you've taken. Both my folks grew up on farms in the Shenandoah Valley during the Great Depression, and there are a bunch of cousins who still farm close by. I've always loved lots of quality time with fence, hay, cattle, chickens, thistles, groundhogs and so on. The citified country music these days doesn't really fit that life as I know it (however, there is bluegrass that does), so I don't relate as well to a lot of the genre. That said, there's so much wonderful music that's played on so many instruments these days, but I'm not wired for all of it...just a few things.

    Nice looking Tele in the pic. Your ideal tenor may be just around the corner. I hope it does soon so you can tell us about it here.

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  16. #62

    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    We used to call them "drugstore cowboys":

    Definition of drugstore cowboy

    1 : one who wears cowboy clothes but has had no experience as a cowboy

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dict...store%20cowboy
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  17. #63

    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    This is a thread started at the Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum in 2007. It is still going. Martin players like their Teles.

    https://umgf.com/telecaster-obsession-t1838.html

    That the tenor tele is a tele is something that attracted me to it. Being in college in the 80's, a lot of jangle pop was Tele based-- especially if you couldn't afford a Rickenbacker. From Rock to Country to New Wave to Jazz to R&B, somebody has used a Tele to great effect. They aren't for everybody but it really is a pretty versatile tool.

  18. #64

    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    I do 300 gigs a year - 299 of them with a Crook Telecaster

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  20. #65
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    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    Two things, only tangentially related to tenors:
    1) My first electric guitar was a blonde 70's Tele. It was the epitomy of how bad a guitar could be-heavy, badly set up, the works. But I still love the color & may pop for one of those butterscotches.

    2) I recently revisited the first several Tom Petty albums for a week or two (being a 70s teen like @dan in va, they were in permanent rotation). If you want to hear a Broadcaster going at full tilt, Mike Campbell's your man. He of course plays lots of guitars, but that sound defined those early albums for me.

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  22. #66

    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    Quote Originally Posted by Verne Andru View Post
    We used to call them "drugstore cowboys":

    Definition of drugstore cowboy

    1 : one who wears cowboy clothes but has had no experience as a cowboy

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dict...store%20cowboy
    Hank Williams, Bill Monroe, Bob Wills, Marty Stuart... Pretty much everyone in country music besides George Strait and Chris LeDoux.

    I call them legends, not drugstore cowboys.

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  24. #67

    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    Hank had the posture of a dang question mark - I don't think his back would have taken kindly to riding a horse, the poor guy!

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    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    Alternative names for posers can be such a regional and cultural thing. For example, Southern humor isn't always in context with our Northern friends, and vice versa. I've always liked the "big hat, no cattle line". And it's usually a good thing when folks simply are who they are. I can think of quite a few great pickers who aren't in the habit of wearing a head cover on stage. My favorite twangers seem to let their Telecasters do the talkin' for 'em most of the time and tend to be pretty humble about it.

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  27. #69

    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    Thanks Huck,
    The brass saddles with adapters sound great. They add complexity compared to the strat saddles.

    I got a set of six tele style mini brass saddles and tried them today.
    They sounded very sharp and clear and I didn’t like them, so I put the two big brass saddles and adapters back on.

    Maybe there’s some magic in making two strings share a saddle?

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    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    I'm headed to NAMM in a few weeks. Happy to drop by Fender's booth to ask about Tele tenors. When I did last year I got blank stares and shrugs of "we have one of those, really?" from several people working their rather large space with hundreds of instruments, yet others claimed to have actually spotted at least one at that booth at the show. I'll try to gather specs at least, assuming I can actually find it.

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  30. #71
    Quietly Making Noise Dave Greenspoon's Avatar
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    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    There's at least one at Melodee Music in Sterling, VA. I was picking up the El Ray mandolin, and the sales guys brought it up. Not my thing, and NFI.
    Axes: Eastman MD-515 & El Rey; Eastwood S Mandola
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  31. #72
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    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    I know this is off track but I'd love Godin to do a tenor Fifth Avenue archtop... I was hoping fender's interest might lead to such things
    My name is Rob, and I am Lord of All Badgers

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    Mandolins: Davidson f5, A5 "Badgerlin".
    Bouzouki: Paul Shippey Axe
    My band's website

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  33. #73
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    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    creebobby and Huck - i'm not a facebook guy but am very interested in the brass saddle mod you're talking about. Does it require more holes in the Tenor Tele tail piece? Info/source/pics/etc would be greatly appreciated. A pair from Armadillo Guitars made for the Mandostrat worked out really well..

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  35. #74

    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    I just received a notice from Chicago Music Exchange this afternoon that mine was just shipped. It was a pre-order from August so hopefully anyone else waiting should have theirs soon too. Really stoked about it!

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  37. #75

    Default Re: Alternate Reality Fender Tenor Tele

    Dan,

    I have to let creebobby give you the details. I've only seen pictures. No drilling of the tailpiece is required. The singles will go into each individual saddle hole. The double has two aluminum block adapters. Stewmac probably carries them.

    Shaqattack, great to hear, hope it gives you years of enjoyment.

    Huck

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