Telecasters are my favourite guitar type, so you can imagine how jealous I am right now. That looks like one of those for-the-rest-of-my-life purchases.
That's exactly what it is to me. I traded in a couple of "not great but very valuable sentimentally" guitars for it, so it's a complete keeper.
I've always been one of those "£500-£800 is the quality/value sweet spot" guitar buyers but I've never been 100% happy with my purchases. Maybe I need to change my thinking and have a smaller number of higher price guitars. Ones that are all 'keepers'. Buying something every other year, not every 6 months.
That's
exactly what I've been through Ken. After I bought my first PRS it really made me go "whoa, so THAT'S what a great guitar sounds and plays like!" and since then I've been switching to the "less quantity, more quality" school of guitar collection. I've still got a bunch of Ibanez RGs that I collect for collecting's sake, but my number of 'players' is reducing quite rapidly. I think I'm pretty much done now, but I've said that before...
The Fender Custom Shop price structure puzzles me. It looks to me like there are 3 price bands, £1800, £2500 & £3500. I've always wondered (never played one) if the £3500 Masterbuilt are really better than the £2500 Teambuilt.
Yeah, the pricing is a little odd. The Nocaster Relics are around £1800 and they're great guitars if you like the neck. They hold their value really well and seem to be the entry level "regular production guitars" for the Custom Shop. Moving to the Teambuilts like mine I think you get a bit more attention to detail, more time on the relic'ing, special runs etc. Generally something a bit different re. pickups, frets, colours etc.
The Masterbuilts, to me, are a bit of a con. The number of Masterbuilts they can churn out from one guy doesn't add up, so I believe they're more of a "MasterSupervised". The Masterbuilder chooses the woods and inspects the guitar at all stages but that one guy doesn't build the complete guitar - they just wouldn't have time. I think it's a marketing thing and to pay an extra £1000 seems unrealistic and incredibly expensive. I seriously doubt they would play or sound much better than a Teambuilt, and £1000 is a LOT of extra cash.
I think the £1800-£2500 guitars are for the players, and the Masterbuilts are for the collectors.
