review 90 Fender Vintera series Guitarist october 2019 GIT451.rev_fender.
FENDER VINTERA SERIES review HIT PARADE The latest in Fender’s ongoing makeovers sees the morphing of the popular Mexican-made Classic and Classic Player guitars into the new decade-specific Vintera series. New name aside, has anything actually changed? We investigate… Words Dave Burrluck Photography Phil Barker FENDER VINTERA ’50S TELECASTER MODIFIED £869 ’60S STRATOCASTER MODIFIED £849 ’60S JAZZMASTER MODIFIED £899 CONTACT Fender Musical Instruments EMEA PHONE 01342 331700 WEB www.fender.
review FENDER VINTERA SERIES VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra I n recent years Fender has refreshed, refocused and renamed virtually all of its key series. The creation of the American Professional range, which gave the long-running American Standards a considerable reboot, was one of the most inspired we’ve seen. Then it was the turn of the American Vintage guitars; they became the decade-specific American Originals – and that’s the style we have here.
FENDER VINTERA SERIES review The combination of the neck shape and what seems like a nicely resonant body gets to the heart of what makes a good Telecaster october 2019 Guitarist GIT451.rev_fender.
review FENDER VINTERA SERIES Fender no longer uses rosewood fingerboards on its Mexican-made guitars. The pau ferro on the ’50s Strat Modified here is attractively striped, too. Fretwire gauge on all our Modified models is medium jumbo; ’board radius is 241mm (9.5 inches) style Adjusto-matic bridge – replacing the vintage-style ‘floating’ bridge of the vintage model – and the vibrato is placed a little closer to it than original vintage.
FENDER VINTERA SERIES review Our Strat is slightly stiffer sounding, slightly brighter than any of our references and a little bass-light in comparison october 2019 Guitarist GIT451.rev_fender.
review FENDER VINTERA SERIES VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra FENDER VINTERA DIMENSIONS (in mm unless stated) TELECASTER Neck width (nut) STRATOCASTER JAZZMASTER 42 41.6 42.17 Neck width (12th fret) 51.64 51.15 51.93 Neck depth (1st fret) 22.8 21.4 21.2 Neck depth (12th fret) 25.3 22 21.8 3.27/7.19 3.7/8.14 3.7/8.14 54 51.5 51 Weight (kg/lb) Bridge string spacing Bridge pickup DCR (kohms) 9.04 6.14 7.62 Middle pickup DCR (kohms) N/A 5.
FENDER VINTERA SERIES review This Vintera Modified is pretty much identical to the previous Classic Player Jazzmaster Special october 2019 Guitarist GIT451.rev_fender.
review FENDER VINTERA SERIES This ‘modern’ two-post vibrato uses a die-cast block and has narrowerthan-vintage string spacing. Certainly not a deal-breaker, just different VIDEO DEMO Select both pickups in parallel and push down that S-1 switch and it’s far from the thin ‘strangled’ out-of-phase sound we expect: it’s less nasal and adds more bass back to create a very usable alternate mix (see ‘Under The Hood’ below).
VIDEO DEMO FENDER VINTERA SERIES http://bit.ly/guitaristextra Strat and lacks just a little power compared with the Tele. The mix is relatively thin and bright, while the fulsome neck retains that almost metallic percussion to the attack with a little more depth than either our Strat or Tele. It’s a little plunkier in terms of the note decay yet deceptively versatile and characterful, creating cavernous, clean 60s twang through to defined alt-rock crunchy gain.
