When is a Telecaster not a Telecaster? When it comes with a pair of mini-humbuckers, a mahogany body and ebony fingerboard like this one!
Continuing a long run of pickuppimped Telecasters, this 2023 release sees our favourite bolt-on in new dress and with a pair of Gold Foil pickups, which, says Fender, “combines the enduring charm of mid-century mail-order guitars with the style and playability of an authentic Fender”.
Technically, there’s no such thing as a single-recipe ‘gold foil’ pickup; the style is inspired by various pawnshop-prize brands such as Teisco, Guyatone, Harmony and Kay (as Huw Price discusses further on page 118). The pickup itself – anything with a bit of gold metallic ‘foil’ on the front with a partial metal cover – came in a variety of usually single-coil styles, some using rubberised ‘fridge’ magnets. But, hey, they’re trendy and have been for some years with many pickup makers offering their own versions, from Jason Lollar’s boutique style to Roswell’s mass-market take. Fender tells us these are mini-humbuckers, not single coils, but that’s about it.
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Just as important as those Gold Foil pickups is the quiet hum-cancellation that removes one of the age-old Tele problems
Before we dig deeper into the pickups, this Mexican-made Telecaster is also unusual in that, firstly, it uses mahogany for its standard slab body, which appears lightly striped through the slightly translucent White Blonde finish. We also get a Gibson-radius (305mm/12-inches) ebony fingerboard and some pretty big frets compared with vintage style. Then there’s the cut-off Tele-style bridge, with its uncompensated brass saddles, that allows the bridge pickup to sit tidily in front in its own chromed pickup-mounting ring. The neck pickup is placed a little lower than normal towards the bridge and is suspended on the laminated black-faced scratchplate. It’s the sort of mash-up that’s a part of many boutique builders’ catalogues, and although it’s hardly an impulse buy at this asking price, it’s significantly less expensive than those small-’shop builds.
Feel & Sounds
Despite our tongue-in-cheek introduction and this model’s differences, our Gold Foil Tele is very much a Telecaster and feels like any other with a pretty standard weight of 3.61kg (7.94lb). There’s nothing new to get used to here, either: for example, the chromed control plate is standard (not reversed) and there’s no angled three-way switch or wiring tricks.
The neck has quite
