What 2 Look 4

A Fender Telecaster is just so damned basic that it's hard to say "What to look for in a Tele?" when asked. A buddy who plays a bit asked me this last summer. He has a thirteen-year-old son who had summer grass-cutting money in hand and was on the hunt. Alas, the young gent was thwarted in his guitar purchase by his uncontrollable puberty testosterone levels. He was dead set on an SG model Gibson, and that's where he went, money in hand. Not too long after that, he wasn't too happy with his axe. Happens all the time.

I too, was that kid back in the day. I considered a Telecaster a toy guitar. Seriously, if it didn't have two humbuckers, what the heck was it good for. My good buddy Brian was kind enough to point me in the right direction a couple of decades ago. I'll die with my current Tele.

But, what to look for really comes down to the fact the the Telecaster is the ultimate guitar for anyone with a bent for any guitar hot-rodding. All you really need is a flat-head screwdriver, a Phillips screwdriver, and a soldering iron. With these tools an incredible tonal sonic palate is available at your finger-tips.

But ultimately in a Tele, it all comes down to language skills after all. And so the question really becomes, does the Tele speak the language of swamp, the language of spank. Some proponents of that tongue include Joe Walsh, Albert Collins, Beck (no, the real one), Muddy Waters, Tom Petty, Prince, Jeff Buckley, Chrissie Hynde, et all, and the list is far too long to continue with, but hopefully you get the picture.....the linguistics of tone.