I bought this guitar as my first ever Telecaster, and now I see why people call it one of the most versatile guitars ever. Anything from high-gain metal to indie, sparkly midwest emo to blues, it just nails down any tone you can imagine. The distorted tones sound much better and "growlier" than on my single-coil strat.
The guitar is just gorgeus and the hardware gives a solid impression at first glance. The neck, tuning machines, saddles all look and feel great.
However, I did run into two quality control issues:
- the nut slots were cut way too high, which caused every open chord to sound a bit off - too off for it to be unnoticeable. I fixed this myself by wrapping sandpaper around the string and moving it back and forth through the slot. After that, the difference was day and night.
- some frets have visible excess glue around them, and I really mean a lot. It doesnt impact playability that much, but it does sometimes feel a bit scratchy and doesnt look that nice from up close.
Personally, neither of these issues is a total dealbreaker - if you don't getting your hands dirty and doing some light setup work yourself. But its still very disappointing to see these flaws on a guitar of this price, especially the poorly cut nut.
Its a solid guitar overall, but be prepared to put in just a little bit extra work to bring it to greatness, where it should/could have been out of the box.
