Vintage guitar of the week #20 - 1987 Fender Contemporary Telecaster HH
This guitar comes from Japan, of course.
The 1987 Fender Contemporary Telecaster HH is a bargain vintage.
While this guitar seems tame today, it was considered "wild" for a Fender-branded electric. This was the '80s, a time when rock music was king and players were demanding guitars that had high-output pickups, could do crazy pitch bending and so on. The Contemporary series was Fender's attempt to capitalize on that.
The Big Question however is this: Is the guitar any good?
Yes, it's good. Very good, in fact. The only thing you have to remember about a Tele like this is that it was built to "sound modern", so don't expect 1950's Telecaster spank out of it. What you can expect is hot-output goodness along with a vibrato system that allows easy deep pitch bending.
Is the vibrato system a Floyd-Rose? No. It's a Fender-branded system. How reliable is it? I've no idea.
Is there a new version of this old guitar?
Yes and no.
There's the Fender Modern Player Telecaster Plus, a China-built (and very well built, I might add) Tele that I would actually prefer over the '87 Contemporary HH. True, there's no vibrato system on it, but it's a guitar I could personally get along with much easier.
And there's the Squier John 5 Telecaster. There is also the Fender version of this, but unless you want to spend thousands, the Squier version is a lot more approachable.
This Tele is a fast-necked, 12-inch radius fretboard, hot-output screamer. This is absolutely the "most rock/metal" Tele that Squier makes right now. Not my style of guitar, but when you want a Tele that brings the metal thunder, this is it.
Does Fender make a Telecaster with a Floyd-style vibrato on it currently?
No, and that alone could be a reason to just buy the vintage '87 instead if that's what you want and you want it Fender-branded.
In the end, don't buy the '87 Tele Contemporary HH because it's a collectible. Buy it because it's a genuinely good Tele with a Floyd-style vibrato on it for a really nice price.
If you can do without the Floyd-style system, I'd say get the new Modern Player Tele Plus shown above instead. Or if you want a total "barn burner" Tele, the John 5 model certainly fits the bill there.
Does planned obsolescence exist with guitars?
Are certain guitars designed to fail early?
Before I answer that, know that planned obsolescence refers to anything manufactured that is designed to fail so you keep buying it again and again.
As far as I'm aware, there are only two things with an electric guitar that will make it fail early.
The first thing is fret wire type. If the frets are made of nickel/silver, yes, they will wear out quickly no matter how big the wire is. If you want frets that last longer, specifically use stainless steel fret wire.
The second thing are strings. Certain strings made by certain manufacturers are fret wreckers. There are specific brands of strings I absolutely will not use because I know they wear down frets fast simply from how abrasive the string is to the fret.
If you know how to set up a guitar, know how to perform basic maintenance and use strings that are not fret wreckers, you will get many years of use out of the instrument. This is true even for the cheapest of guitars.
Basically put, no, planned obsolescence does not exist when it comes to electric guitars, simply for the reason there's really no way to engineer it in there.
And even if there were a way to engineer planned obsolescence into an electric guitar, the guitar modder community would find ways around it quick (as they have been doing for decades).
How can you tell if a certain brand of string is a fret wrecker?
Chances are you have a guitar with nickel/silver frets, so the only thing you can really do to prevent early fret wear aside from playing lighter is to use strings that don't wreck frets.
The easiest way to tell if a certain string brand is a fret wrecker or not is to examine the unwound G string from a brand new pack of strings before installing it. Why the G? Because it's the thickest unwound string of the set and the easiest to spot imperfections, should there be any. The string should be smooth all the way through, have no discoloration and no weird bumps nor coarseness anywhere along the wire.
If you do see discoloration, coarseness and/or weird bumps anywhere along the wire, consider switching to another brand of guitar string.
Does it matter how much the string costs? No. Spending more on a different brand of string doesn't guarantee it will be any better. What does matter is that every unwound string is straight, not discolored and smooth from beginning to end. As for the wound strings, you really can't visually determine anything from those concerning how they will affect frets over time. But you can visually determine how an unwound string would affect frets over time.
In other words, if brand new never-used unwound strings out of a fresh pack look bad, they are bad and will wreck frets.
Cheap guitar of the week #35 - HardLuck Kings Chop Shop Spider
Possibly the cheapest way to get a Gibson Firebird shape guitar.
The HardLuck Kings Chop Shop Spider is one of the very few axes for cheap that has the Gibson Firebird shape to it.
The Firebird has mini-humbuckers, bound neck, reverse headstock (the tuner gears are actually behind the headstock and not to the side), and has block inlays on the fingerboard.
The HardLuck Kings guitar has full-size humbuckers, no neck binding, standard headstock with standard tuners and spider-shape inlays. The knobs are also placed slightly differently.
What makes the Spider the attractive guitar? It's at least $700 less than a Firebird is...
...and like I said above, it's one of the very few axes where you can actually get the Firebird shape for cheap.
What are the "safest" guitar styles?
There are 3 specific guitars that always work when playing it safe.
What is "safe"?
Certain styles, as in looks, are guaranteed safe. For some buyers, this is important because they want to purchase a guitar that they know is considered "good" but will also hold decent resale value in the future.
Note that I'm talking about style here. Not sound. Not reliability. Style. Just style, and only style.
Brand
The three safest brands are Fender, Gibson and Martin. Fender and Gibson cover the electrics, and Martin covers the acoustics.
Color
On electrics, only one color matters. Sunburst.
On acoustics, only one color matters. Natural.
Model
The only model that matters from Fender is the American Standard Stratocaster.
The only model that matters from Gibson is the USA Les Paul Standard.
The only model that matters from Martin is the D-45.
Specific classics that always work
- Fender American Standard Stratocaster, 3-Tone Sunburst, maple neck/fretboard
- Gibson USA Les Paul Standard, Heritage Cherry Sunburst
- Martin D-45 (any, as long as it's natural, no sunburst)
Which would I personally buy?
If I actually cared about going with a "safe" guitar, I would get the Strat.
Would I get it because it's the "cheapest" of the lot? No. I'd get it because I know the Strat very well and I could get the most use out of the instrument for what I play.
Should you get one of the above?
If you care about resale value, yes - BUT - and this is a big but - you absolutely CANNOT modify the guitar in any way.
Once the guitar is bought, the only thing you can change on it is the strings and that's it. If you change anything else on the instrument, you lose resale value instantly.
Remember, "safe" guitars are boutique instruments that have to be babied because you bought it for the resale value. Treat your Fender, Gibson or Martin as you would a Rolex Submariner. You only use it on special occasions, and when you do, you're very careful not to get so much as a scratch anywhere on it.
Vintage guitar of the week #19 - 1956 Gibson Les Paul Junior in TV Yellow
What is TV Yellow all about? I'll tell you.
Before we get into why "TV" is in the name of the finish color, let's talk about the rest of the guitar first.
The '56 Les Paul Junior is to Gibson what the MusicMaster model is to Fender. These are lower-end models that, while full instruments, are scaled down and have barely any features to them. All you get is one pickup, two knobs and that's it.
How does a Les Paul with a single P90 pickup sound? Pretty darned good, provided you know how to wield a P90 correctly. True, you don't get all the appointments that the Les Paul Standard has, but rest assured, it is still a Les Paul.
Personally, I could get along very well with a Junior as I like its minimalist approach. The Junior is the polar opposite of my complicated Jazzmaster, which is what makes the guitar attractive in the first place.
A modern - and really cheap - version of the Junior (somewhat) is the Epiphone Les Paul Special I P90. If you really like a minimalist Paul with the "wraparound" bridge but want one real cheap, well, there you go.
So anyway, TV Yellow. Let's talk about that.
TV Yellow came into existence because of black-and-white television.
In the early days of TV in the 1950s, everything was black-and-white. While true color TV has been around since 1953, the adoption of it in the marketplace was very slow. And I mean slow-as-molasses slow. Why? Price. Color televisions were prohibitively expensive.
Side note concerning color TV: Color really didn't become common until around the mid-1970s. Yes, it took that long before everyone finally got color TV.
A problem that presented itself with black-and-white broadcasts is that anything white washed itself right out. Whether it was a suit jacket, shirt, dress, shoes, chair, table, desk or whatever it was, it absolutely could not be white because of color washout.
Remember, we're talking about a tube-type 525 scan line small display and not a crisp, clear modern panel. Anything white on a tube-type like that simply washed right out.
The solution to this problem? Don't use white.
What Gibson decided to do in order to present a light-colored guitar on television was introduce a "TV" color, hence the creation of TV Yellow. On black-and-white television, TV Yellow looks white, even though it's not. In person, the guitar looks yellow because it literally is yellow.
Another interesting side note: Even on color televisions back in the early days, a TV Yellow guitar finish still looks white because of the way color is displayed on a tube-type television set. Color representation really didn't start getting "true" until modern panel televisions much, much later in the 2000s.
So there you have it. Everything you ever wanted to know about the TV Yellow guitar finish.
Why does TV Yellow still exist for Gibson and Epiphone guitars? Tradition. That, and it's still a really cool color on a guitar.
Does Epiphone have a true Junior model aside from the Special?
Yes, but it may not be in TV Yellow when you see the listings.