Fender Custom Telecaster FMT HH is a steal

Once you know what this has, you'll want one.

The Fender Custom Telecaster FMT HH is obviously a modern take on a Telecaster. As such, it really wasn't a model that took off and most people gave it a miss.

Make no mistake, this is a high-end Telecaster. The top is carved. The finish is transparent to show off the flamed wood with matching headcap. The neck has binding with graphite nut, and fret markers are abalone. It's loaded with Seymour Duncan pickups ('59 neck and Pearly Gates bridge) from the factory, and with push-pull to bring out the single-coil tones.

But hang on, there's one more thing.

This is a set neck Telecaster with belly cut in the rear.

Wow.

There's only one thing "bad" about it, but not bad as far as I'm concerned. It has a super-flat 15.75" fingerboard radius. That is literally the only thing I could pick out that anybody would take issue with.

Otherwise, people are still giving this guitar a miss and I don't know why. You can easily find these things south of $650 in barely-used condition when you look around. And look around you should because this modern Tele is really packed with some seriously good stuff.

RSS was a thing on the internet that never really went away

There are people to this day that really, really miss Google Reader.

What I'm going to talk about is a nerdy internet thing but not really, because once you know what RSS is, yeah, you're going to want it.

RSS is Really Simple Syndication. Some web sites have a feed you can subscribe to. Ordinarily, "subscribe" is a dirty word, but not in this instance because you never give out any personal info to use it. All you take is the feed address of a web site you like, put it into your feed aggregator a.k.a. feed reader software, and whenever the site published a new article, ta-da, you get updated...

...and that brings me to Google Reader. A ton of people used this and loved it, but Google shut it down in 2013. And as I said above, there are still people to this day that really miss it. Some users had 25+ web site feeds or more in there where they could easily track the latest articles.

What made Google Reader as well as other feed readers great was the fact you could keep up with the web sites you liked without having to load each one individually in separate tabs. All the sites you liked, all in one place and easy to manage.

Mozilla Firefox at one point did have a version of this called Live Bookmarks. It wasn't exactly like Google Reader, but you could list feeds side-by-side with regular bookmarks that automatically updated themselves whenever a new article was posted. It was great and it worked... until Mozilla took it away in 2018.

A simple yet very nice feed reader for Linux that runs in Terminal is newsboat. Really easy to set up, really fast and updated regularly. I can do everything in newsboat that a feed reader is supposed to do. Subscribe to feeds, categorize them, combine feeds into subcategories, and so on. Newsboat is good software.

When I started using newsboat, I was reminded of how good a feed reader really is, so much to the point I use it regularly now.

RSS never "died". Feed addresses that work in feed readers are still a mainstay of many web sites, this one included.

However, it is true that a lot of people simply don't know that RSS exists. It does, and you could use it right now.

And yes, there are feed reader apps for the phone. Search your app store and you'll find them. On mobile, it's absolutely easier to use a feed reader instead of loading web sites one by one or one app per site (which would get ridiculous real quick).

The joy of playing cheap guitars

Snobs give these a miss. I don't.

I recently visited a little hole-in-the-wall place that carried nothing but cheap guitars. Why nothing but the cheap stuff? Because they're not "approved" to carry the more expensive brands (there's a whole process involved for anybody who wants to sell highfalutin brand guitars and it's not fun).

There are three things I know when it comes to the cheap stuff.

First, the low end brands have absolutely caught up to the higher tier stuff, and it's for one reason. CNC machining. Bodies and necks are built just as well as guitars costing quadruple the price, and I'm not kidding.

Second - and this is a weird one but true - lower end guitars have to put in better effort just so people will buy them. You can really see this with things like the neck pocket fit and paint. A lot of cheaper brands do it right. The higher tier brands, on the other hand, do a lot of cost cutting. This is why you will see things like finish blemishes and nasty neck pocket gaps on $1,000+ guitars whereas you really don't on the lower end stuff.

Third, given that most guitar players are such brand snobs, they don't actively seek out shops that sell the cheap stuff - but I do...

...and it's there I get a lot of enjoyment out of playing stuff that the snobs wouldn't give a second look to, or even a first for that matter.

I have a video of me playing some Tagima TG500 and Sawtooth guitars at that hole-in-the-wall shop.

Great guitars, great necks, great sounds. I had to resist pulling out my wallet because there were a few I wanted to buy on the spot.

An alternative to Tagima and Sawtooth is Grote. Lots of good choices for cheap.

My new favorite clicky pen

I liked these so much that I bought a 24-pack of them, and it wasn't easy to get these things.

Recently I was given a pen, a Zebra Z Grip that came out of a pack where the majority of them were black ink with a couple that had blue ink. Just your regular style retractable ball point pen with 1.0mm tip size, i.e. medium size.

And oh my God did I like that pen. I wanted more, but only in blue because blue ink is all I use.

Well, that presented a problem. Everybody locally has either the black-ink-only version or the combo pack like I mentioned a moment ago. All I wanted was blue.

I did find the all-blue pen pack eventually, but had to go to an office store just to get it. And I was forced to buy it as a 24-pack even though I totally don't need that many pens. But I'm okay with that.

You can, of course, find these online in a more reasonable 12-pack size. That is actually what I wanted, but the local store had the 24-pack I could get right then and there, so I went for it. No regrets even though it's unlikely I'll ever use them all.

I do like this pen enough to where I might try the highfalutin metal barrel version. Fancy pants, indeed.

Life is too short to use a crappy pen, so I might go for that later.

Squier 40th Anniversary Telecaster prices are all over the place

Shop around and you can score one for under $350 right now.

Evidently, the Squier 40th Anniversary Telecaster has been a tough sell, so Fender has slashed the price. At the time I write this in late August 2023, the price is $330. Brand new. Yep.

However, if you look at the listings for the same guitar, prices are flying all over the place.

Some are charging too much at $600, while others are under $350, and I've even seen a lightly used one for under $300.

What exactly is a 40th anniversary Squier Telecaster?

It's a Tele with "aged" chrome hardware, black guard, satin urethane finished body (very comfortable), tinted satin urethane finished neck (also very comfortable), vintage style tuning machines and pickups featuring alnico magnets. It is unknown what type of alnico, but my guess is since this is supposed to be an anniversary model, it's probably alnico 3.

My advice: Buy with the intent of getting a premium Squier for cheap. The satin-everything body + neck makes this a super comfortable player.

If you like Telecasters, score one for under $350 and you really do get something great for the money. $300 to $350 is definitely the sweet spot for one of these, be it new or lightly used.

And if you can't score one at a good price, the Classic Vibe Telecaster is always a sure thing.