Ah! I see this thread has taken an unexpected turn Mr Bump :lol:
It does sound like you're edging away from a tele - and you're a wise man if you can find that out for certain before you've bought one...
But just to confuse you some more though :D I think I'm probably in vaguely the same place as you, except I've owned one since February.
I've always hankered after a tele since fellow rockers in the early 80s were telling me "you can't play metal/rock on a tele". Later on I learnt about Steve Cropper and all those fine, fine guitarists - you can't do that sort of thing without a tele. I saw Johnny Cash in the late 80s before he got big again, his lead-guitarist that night did superb tele things (most of which were just "dung-tigga-dung-tigga" in nature, but it was fab). Er, who else? ...does anyone else remember the Georgia Satellites? Dan Baird, was that his name? The list goes on and on.
I owned an old squier for ages - used it live a few times, when I was doing a "Tom Petty" sort of job in a band. But it just didn't have that "twang".
Then I got the baja in february. It took me ages to find a butterscotch rather than the other colours, I tried it for 5 mins, it was ALL twang, I sighted the neck, bought it, and ran home as fast I could...
Then I discovered what all tele-lovers know - it's a beast all on it's own, and you've really got to work to make those sounds. I seriously regretted buying it for a while, especially when I got an Explorer a week later. But all the while I had "but I should like a tele" nagging away. Then one weekend I spent all day playing her, setting her up, playing her some more, adjusting amp settings (Twinfan's right btw), playing her some more... and fell in love - there was "that sound" coming out of my playing...
Sometimes I pick up the tele and it's "wot?? where's that gorgeous sound gone?". It's because I've got back into my "Les Paul" head, or whatever else I've been playing.
At the moment, if I've been playing something else all week, it takes me at least an hour on the tele to get my mind round it, and then suddenly from the next room I'll hear "that's sounding nice, which one is that?"
The sound I'm talking about is the "just on the dirty side of just breaking up" fender type amp sounds. Use the volume and tone on the guitar for clean, dirt or bite. I'm talking bends and vibrato, I'm talking staccato single note rhythm parts, etc, etc... I'm playing mainly blues, country rock, that sort of thing on it.
If that's anything like what you've been hankering after - then I'd say the tele is what you're going to want one day, but you're going to have to learn to play it like that to get those sounds - otherwise, whenever you pick it up, it is somewhat extreme and not at all what you first had in mind :lol:
Sorry for the essay (especially if I'm barking up entirely the wrong tree) but I've just got a feeling that you'll need a tele one day...
EDIT: holy-sh1t!! that thing Philly's posted is cute - wot is it? (I don't usually like the look of "exotic" teles)
