This is a 2004 Fender Japan Telecaster ‘52 Vintage Reissue, except somewhere along the way it decided that being a perfectly respectable Japanese Telecaster wasn’t quite enough and went off to acquire a few bad habits.
 
We fell in love with this proper ’52-style Tele with a Sen ash body, maple neck, 7.25" radius fretboard and vintage-style construction and decided to give it a full 2-tone sunburst nitro relic refinish, so it looks like it has spent the last 70 years touring the world rather than sitting politely in the corner of the living room. The wear is all cosmetic, so you get the battered vintage appearance without having to inherit anyone’s structural problems.
 
The neck has a proper soft V profile, honey amber gloss finish and worn back, that gives it that instantly familiar ’50s feel, while the dimensions are reassuringly substantial: 23.2 mm at the first fret and 25.5 mm at the 12th. This is not one of those modern Tele necks that disappears between your fingers. There’s some wood here. Not baseball bat, but definitely “yes, this is a neck.” The maple board has the expected 7.25" radius and freshly dressed and polished vintage style frets, while the upgraded Graph Tech frictionless nut quietly removes one of the less charming aspects of vintage Tele ownership - tuning instabilities.
 
The body is made from Japanese Sen ash, routed correctly for the traditional SS pickup configuration and fully copper-foil shielded. At 3.3 kg, it’s also a lovely weight for a Tele — light enough to forget about, resonant enough to remind you why you picked up a Tele in the first place.
 
The Pat Pend bridge has been fitted with compensated Gotoh brass saddles, so you get the old-school look with considerably less of the “why is the G string doing that?” business.
 
Then we get to the pickups, which have been handmade specifically for this guitar. These are scatterwound vintage-accurate single coils, using AlNiCo II magnets and plain enamel wire, designed to get as close as possible to the softer, sweeter character of an early Tele rather than simply making everything louder because someone had a spare overwound pickup lying around.
 
Expect plenty of snap and twang, but with a little more give and warmth than the usual aggressive Tele bridge pickup. Neck pickup is rounder and woody, the middle position has that wonderfully useless-but-essential “I could play this all afternoon” quality, and the bridge will happily remind your amp that Teles were never designed to be subtle.
 
The wiring has had the same treatment. CTS solid-shaft A250K pots, Orange Drop capacitor, Oak USA 3-way switch, cloth-covered wiring and a Switchcraft jack mounted in an Electrosocket. So underneath the vintage exterior, everything has been upgraded where it actually matters.
 
So this is basically a 2004 Fender Japan Telecaster that has been given the life it probably wished it had — old-school looks, chunky ’50s neck, handmade vintage-style pickups, sensible modern upgrades and a very healthy disregard for showroom condition.
 
Now it's time to make memories together!
 
This instrument received a full professional setup with deep body clean, neck deep clean and full electronics check. Restringed with D'addario 10-46 nickel-plated steel strings.
 
This guitar will be shipped around UK with Parcelforce and UPS couriers, safely packed into a sturdy guitar cardboard box. 24h courier service provided to UK customers. We also ship to USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and many other places, but at the moment we don't ship to EU or Northern Ireland - but please drop us a message if you are in the EU as we might be able to deliver in person.