Ordered a Fender Nashville telecaster

[Duffy]

Ordered a Fender Nashville Telecaster today, will be delivered tomorrow free. Also ordered a Behringer DR600 Reverb pedal that I'm hoping will not be complete junk.

Really looking forward to the Nashville Telecaster.

I got the honey blonde with the rosewood fretboard and tortise shell guard. It has tex mex pickups including the middle strat pup.

Might have to have the wiring changed slightly to allow the bridge and neck pickup to be combined in the regular tele combination.

I have been wanting to get a Fender telecaster and finally decided on this one that has just a little bit of an added charm to it, making it a little different from the std MIM tele.

It also has an ash body.

A lot of dudes replace the six saddle rig with the three saddle set up. I will leave it alone for now and I like the ash tray bridge anyway. If I get string rattling from the saddles I will try to level them out as best as I can and maybe try some other approaches to quieting them, hopefully they won't cause rattle.

I think the Nashville tele has a "vibe" to it that I can appreciate. I have never played a Fender Nashville tele but like my Peavey Generation EX Triple Single that has two strat pups on it. I've never played, I don't think, tex mex pickups. I might have played a Jimmy Vaughn strat before though, but can't remember. I like Texas Special strat pups but don't think they are a lot like tex mex pups.

I can't think of a guitar that I looked as forward to getting as this one, for a long time; maybe back to my birdseye Epi LP Std Limitted Ed in deep wine finish, and that is an awesome guitar. I hope my anticipation and anxiety is well justified. I have read that the Nashville tele's seem to have the best consistency of excellence in build quality of all the Mexican tele's. I hope, of course, this pans out to be applicable in my case.

Do any of you guys have a Fender Nashville Telecaster? What are your impressions? I normally like a maple fretboard on a telecaster, but decided to get the rosewood to mellow this one out a little, theoretically; plus I like to oil my fretboards.

I'm looking forward to playing this tele thru my new Vox AC15c1 with the Celestion Greenback. This, by the way, has turned out to be a very versitile and great two channel amp for use with everything from my CV 50's with Texas Specials to my road warrior birdseye Epi Std LP with the SD "hot rodded" humbuckers. In fact I just played my newish Xavier white XV500 LP tribute with guitarfetish PAT chrome humbuckers into the Vox and it cleaned right up very nicely for a great clean LP tone and also roared with great overdriven distortion, straight up, no pedals. That cheap XV500 solid body LP tribute is a great sounding guitar, different sounding, of course from the Epi birdseye with the SD's in it.

The Vox sounds great with my stock Squier Std. tele as well, responding with bell like clean tones and some very musical thicker sounds, enhancing the G and D strings in the blues lines, especially. It provides a really smooth heavily full musical tone with an absence of mud or mush, but a low frequency stability and smoothness that is very appreciable. Both channels provide smooth tones, the normal channel moreso than the top boost. Great sustain with the amp as well. Pick response from the hand to the guitar is translated to the amp and the ear with a dynamism that does not go without immediate notice.

On some of my guitars, like the Xavier LP tribute, when you turn down the volume pot, it does not noticeably reduce the volume, but cleans up the sound. I imagine this is a quality of the guitar rather than the amp but the Vox translates the volume roll off into a very nice cleaned up tone.

If the Nashville is going to be versitile, it will be fun to play thru the Vox. I also am using my Delta equally and my Palomino V32 212 is a great deal of fun with humbuckers in particular, clean, overdrive, and boost. The Celestion Seventy 80 speakers in it are great speakers in this amp, as well as in my cheap Crate Flexwave 15R I put a free brand new one in. All part of the aftermath of my warranty claim when my Crate V50, switching power supply, amp blew up. I still have a Seventy 80 in a box I can do something with, repaired with paper machet. All the other ones are perfect brand new Seventy 80's, but the repaired one is sounding great and will warm up a new home some day.

I will fire up my Nikon D5000 and take some pictures of my Nashville tomorrow if the overnight delivery materializes, preferably full sun outside pictures along with some pictures of some of my other stuff I haven't taken many pictures of, like the sanded down to bare wood neck of my Ibanez semi hollow body AS73 finished with linseed oil, and my great deal I got on my Ibanez AR320 superstrat gold top, brand new NOS for 250 out the door with Duncan/Ibanez open coil HB's - great, great sounding superstrat. Beautiful guitar without saying, stunning, low bling beauty. The feel and sound is incredible and it is very heavy as well, all mahogany body and set neck.

I need to get my recording stuff rigged up and start to try to post some audio clips. I have all the elements of my rig reassembled after the relocation inconsistencies and unaccountability of a lot of stuff. Not looking back, moving forward and replacing a lot of stuff, mostly complete and definitely liveable, thanks in no small part to my wonderful fiance Charity.

I'm happily engaged but still officially married, hopefully soon to be rectified if I can believe my lawyer who tells me I'm a little paranoid about the whole thing. He says I'm in a relatively good position and should come out of this better than I was anticipating.

Anyway the Nashville is something to look forward to for the next several hours.

I'll keep you all posted.

[Jimi75]

Very, very nice choice! The extra middle pu is a super bonus and gives you a lot of great sounds. I have only played the Nashville Tele some couple times, must have been around the year 2000, but I still remember it being a great instrument! The Tex Mex pus are pretty hot, make sure you lower the treble so it doesn't cut too much in the band's sound.

Nice choice of colour, too!

[Katastrophe]

Cool, Duffy! I've always wanted to play a 3 pup Tele. I'll bet there's gonna be a lotta tones to be had there!

[Duffy]

Got the Nashville this morning early. Been playing it on and off all day. Set up perfect, no faults, great look, feel, playability, thin neck, ash body, great tone in all switch positions.

Played thru Vox AC15c1 it goes from screaming, roaring twang city to a toned down mellowness that is sweet and smooth. It is definitely one of the best guitars I own.

Some say the bridge pup lacks twanginess but I can't understand where this idea is coming from because it is the twangiest bridge pickup I've ever played; and the neck tele pickup is also a super high quality sounding semi high output pickup with great tone: Tex Mex tele pickups. I don't see where they lack any twanginess or tele tone and they absolutely can't be considered thin or weak. Maybe there were some older Nashvilles that had different tonal qualities, but this one roars, chimes, and sings.

The middle strat Tex Mex pickup is totally not a slouch, with great tone and compliments the tele pickups right in step; the guitar is rigged up with a lot of class, has charm, and is definitely a step up from the Standard Mexican tele, hosting some really nice features.

All of the switches five positions produce great sounds and I am planning to leave the switching stock, doing without the neck and bridge combination, as designed by the Fender engineers. Fender knows that a lot of guys would want the bridge/neck combination but they decided to not include that option; there is a reason for that, unknown to me. I'm leaving it stock and calling the Fender engineer and asking hime why they left out the bridge/neck combination. I will
play my Squier Standard Telecasters with the bridge/neck combinations or my Peavey Generation EX Classics, but none of these sound anywhere NEAR like this Fender Nashville telecaster, believe me. This Nashville has a sound that is really awe inspiring and it looks really great as well in honey blonde with the rosewood board and tortoise shell guard.

I'm finding the strat switching to provide great sounds and plan to keep it stock. It was designed that way for a reason

Oh yeah: I almost forgot to mention that I also picked up a Behringer cheap, 29 dollar, DR600 stereo digital reverb pedal with six different reverbs and tweakable knobs and this cheap item sounds really great, quiet, and fills my need for a decent reverb pedal. I was going to get the expensive digitech hard wire one. This cheap plastic full sized behringer reverb pedal is actually really nice and is all that I need, providing superior reverb options, superior to the tank reverbs on some of my amps, and a real treat to use with my Little Giant head and Mini Colossal that don't have reverbs. I like some reverb in my sound a lot, to fill out the sound and give it an ambience and a "vibe".

In conclusion, the Nashville Telecaster is a really great Mexican telecaster and should garner the respect that it earns. It may be a nitche guitar, but a great guitar none the less. Very versitile, needless to say.

Glad I decided to get it and hope that my feedback here is of interest or help to anyone that has been thinking about getting a telecaster with something beyond the basic standard appointments.

[Tig***]

Wow, sounds like you got a great guitar in your hands. Another successful adoption!

How would you compare the sounds you get with the Nashville Tele to a similar level Strat?



Generic Tele question:
Does the classic Tele bridge pickup twang come from the plate it is mounted to underneath the pickup? I've heard that some of the twang comes from the bridge and brass saddles.

[MAXIFUNK]

Congrats Duffy nice axe for sure I have had the Blackout Tele on my Gas list for sometime now similar setup. But if I jump for another Tele I am leaning towards the Baja Tele but for now I'll wait. ENJOY the New AXE!!

[Duffy]

Tig,

I don't think I can compare it to any tele I own because it is WAY nicer than my other ones and sounds WAY different, twang city plus lots of other tones.

I have two Squier Standard Telecasters, one stock and the other has a Fender Custom Shop Texas Special bridge pickup. I also have one of each of the Peavey Generation EX Telecasters; actually two Classics, a Vintage which is the HB covered neck like Keith Richards, the Triple Single, and the Custom with two covered humbuckers and high class appointments like front and back body binding.

The Tex Mex pups on the Nashville "sound" hotter, very hot indeed, but I'm not sure where the hot sound comes from in the design, if it is DC resistance or something else. All of the pickups sound "hot". I like this because it pushes the pre amp on my Vox AC15c1 new amp early on, without turning up the top boost volume or master volume very far at living room levels. It overdrives really well, but cleans up when you back off the volume and tone controls, use the normal channel, etc. So, yes, I can get a great clean sound out of an awesome very twangy bridge pickup and the equally awesome neck rhythm pickup, really class sounds.

The middle Tex Mex strat pickup is also hot and has great tone and is an awesome pickups and position to use. Positions two and four on the stratomatic switch provide combinations of the middle with the other pickups that are very useable and sound super great, I mean super great, with unique tonalities.

This Nashville Telecaster does NOT sound like a strat, in any sense of the word, when compared to a good strat like a Classic Vibe fifties, etc. It has the strat pickup but the dynamics of the guitar bring forth the strat pickup sound in a unique way that is very appealing to me. This is a great guitar in my opinion. I'm really glad I got it.

The only amp I've played it thru so far has been the Vox. I need to try the Delta, Palomino V32 212 w Celestion Seventy 80's, and my Fender SCXD, for starters.

Got a cheap Behringer DR600 stereo digital reverb pedal along with my order, free overnight shipping and all, why not take advantage of it and grab something else. I want a digitech hard wire reverb but this 29 dollar behringer is worth way more than its cost. Cheap plastic it has that nice rotary knob that switches thru six different reverb types and this is useful because one type may work way better for a strat than an LP and so forth. I'm going to mess with that reverb pedal right now. It's fun.

I would say that the Nashville Telecaster is a welcome step up from the standard Mexican strat, with its ash body on the blonde one, tex mex pickups, third pickup, and stratomatic switching. You don't get the neck/bridge tele pup combination for some reason. I'm leaving mine stock and calling Fender to try to find out why they purposely left out this switch option. There has to be a reason for it. Probably because they figure people buying Nashville tele's already have a couple traditional tele's.

[Duffy]

I don't think my Nashville even has the brass plate under the bridge pickup and I have heard that it is a major upgrade in tone.

I should look into that. You might have to solder a wire from the pickup to the brass plate, however; very carefully I believe, so as not to break the windings in the pickup. I need to look into this more.

[Iago]

I think the Tex-Mex doesn't have the plate under the bridge pickup. Some say it adds twang, some say it's there just for grounding...

Twang is mainly technique and the right amp, in my own experience. You may also prefer fresh light strings, 10's or 9's.