Nice way of demo'ing. Yes, there is much truth to your observation: "I could hear significant differences in tone from each different guitar. I was really surprised that the tones varied so much, and that those differences were so obvious to me."

My favorite tones came from the American Special, followed by the Baja Tele.

I was playing my Hell Guitars tele style last night using the neck pickup, with the Fender Super Champ X2's Vox amp model, driven fairly hard. The classic wood like tones were awesome!