Well, I pulled the trigger. I bought myself a Fender Deluxe Nashville Telecaster. It's the white blonde one pictured on that page. The finish is semi-transparent; you can see the wood grain through it. For some reason I couldn't bond with the one at Guitar Center, but I could with the one at a more local dealer. Good thing because they offered me a good deal on my '51 with a nice discount on the Tele itself.

It's not in my paws right now. They give free setups for a year with a purchase, so I have them doing the normal setup. They didn't have the GHS Boomer gauge I usually use with Eb tuning (.10-.52) but I decided to try the D'Addario NYXL set of the same gauge. Hopefully I like them. I also asked them to check the fret edges. There isn't sprout per se, but they didn't give the frets a lot of attention when they were cut. A quick once-over with a file will fix that. I had them take the strap lock buttons off my 51 and put them on the Tele.

It's a Tele that's bound to be polarizing since it is a thoroughly modern take on one: Vintage Noiseless pups, 12" radius, narrow-tall frets (as tall as jumbo but not as wide), modern bridge, cut-away heel, slightly smaller (by 1mm) nut width. All those features that annoy purists, I like. Clips, pics, et al, after I pick it up on Tuesday.

For some reason that I can't fully define, I liked it quite a bit better than the Deluxe Strat. The Tele sounds louder and clearly sustains better acoustically. Maybe I just have a thing for Teles since my first electric was a t-style Charvel Model 7.

I'm going to leave it unmodded for a while, but at some point I'm definitely adding a switch or push-pull pot for a neck-on mod so I can get the classic Tele bridge and neck combo.