I love it when a company re-invents a line. The Fender American Vintage Series has been a mainstay product line for Fender for many years – probably their oldest product line – and they’ve completely recently re-vamped the series with all hand-made in the US of A. Now normally when I get news of Fender doing anything “new,” my reaction is typically, “meh.”
But this news intrigued me because of the detail that Fender took in re-creating these guitars from actual vintage models; making direct measurements to the instruments themselves as opposed to going off blueprints, and more importantly creating period-correct pickups. Then when I reviewed the Fender American Vintage Series site itself, I smiled to see that what Fender was creating was NEW guitars, not banged up relicked ones like the Roadworn Series.
So what you get with these guitars is brand-new, showroom-quality guitars built as if you were buying them when they were released. That’s a deal-maker for me! And these aren’t cheap offshore repros. They brought production back to the US for these and that pleases me – a lot. So American-made, period-correct, fresh-off-the-showroom-floor guitars? SOLD!
My personal favorite is the ’58 Telecaster – I love blondes. 🙂 John 5 compared that to his own ’58 and said he’d put his own safely under the bed and take the new on the road with him. What an endorsement!
Guitar Gear 