I've heard a lot of people all over the 'Net rave about the Fender Highway One Texas Tele. I test-drove one today through a Fender Deluxe. I chose that one because the guitar guy said that it has the Fender Texas Tele pickups in it when in fact it does not. It is a nicely balanced axe. It looked really nice (although I'm not sure about the wood-grain-showing-through-the-paint look). I liked the 12" radius neck as opposed to Fender's standard 9.5". I was going to play a bunch of Metallica riffs off-key for Jimi, but sadly I don't know any. (As an aside, their amps are in a separate room with a sliding door. You will annoy no one with your noodling other than your fellow noodlers. As it happened, I was the only one in the guitar part of the store.)

I played some blues progressions, a few licks, a couple scales to be annoying. And I just didn't like it. The pickups just seemed kind of dull and un-Tele-like. Messing with the tone on the amp made it better, but there just seemed to be no brightness to it at all. If I had a blind taste-test between by '51 and the Highway One, I would immediately pick out the Highway One as the more expensive one, but I would have picked my '51 for tone. If I could take the Highway One neck and slap it on my '51, I'd be all set. (Except for the fact that the truss rod is adjusted at the heel which is a design that should have been relegated to the dustbin of history.)

So, am I crazy for not liking a guitar that so many seem to really like or is it one of those things?