You may - I Googled “American Tele Deluxe radius” and found hits that claim 9.5" and 12". The one I played was 12" - at least. No question. Very similar to the Eric Johnson Strat, which has a 12" radius. My Tele has a 9.5" radius (it’s an Allparts Tele FAT neck - http://www.allparts.com/store/necks-guitar-necks-tmo-fat,Product.asp - which I had re-shaped on the back side and the AmDeluxe was obviously different / flatter…
They apparently did the same thing with the Strat Plus. I’m 99% sure mine is a 12", and I see references to smaller radii all over the place. I’ll verify mine when I get home.
And you claim you aren’t a guitar geek - yeah, right! 
Be proud of your geekiness - isn’t that geek gene what drove you to the SDMB in some form or fashion in the first place? 
**squeegee ** - this is what happens when you see guitar geek guys in their natural habitat - the Internet with tons of research power at our fingertips! Bottom line is that fingerboard radius is subtle-yet-critical feature. The fact that you picked out that guitar as one that “plays itself " for you - and I would bet a month of my salary that it is a 12” radius, which feels very different vs. standard Tele - says it all. There is a reason that particular model speaks to you and I bet that is a big part of it…
Yeah, bound teles are pretty much the sexiest guitars out there, in my opinion.
One other “extra” that hasn’t been discussed: the cutaway neck heel on the body is a very nice little bonus. Upper fret access is dead easy on the Deluxe teles.
I pretend that I’m not a geek because I can’t geek as well as you. I am not worthy to geek in your presence. 
Oh yeah! I forgot about that! That is a nice feature!
And **Crotalus **- you are a stealth geek! You don’t fly your geek flag high when it comes to arcane trivia - e.g., who played what model, or what pickup goes into what year of Les Paul, etc. - but then you go whipping out your radius gauges! You geek about the stuff that actually goes into setting up and playing the darn thing!
Hey **Ogre ** - I can’t remember if we’ve ever discussed this on a git thread - how do you feel about my statement on knob twiddling on a Tele? How often do you have your V and T both dimed?
Well, if I’m playing really raw punk rock or nasty chicken-pickin’ licks, I’ll usually dime everything, just cause I think the attitude of those styles demands that you make ears bleed.
But yeah, for normal rhythm work, knob twiddling is a must. You pretty much have to do it to get a good, driving, “spongy” tone that doesn’t shatter windows.
And OT: but I want a B-Bender real bad-like.
OK, yet more guitar shopping, this time back at G-mart. I spent about 2 1/2 hours playing instruments.
This time I grabbed the American Deluxe Tele and the Schecter C-1 Classic that I’d liked before (such different guitars; they sat on their stands and sneered at each other), and did a taste test against other guitars. I asked for any higher end Strats or Teles, and more Schecters, and any other shredder models they thought would be good. I ended up playing 5 more guitars against the two I really liked.
The new girls I ended up playing:
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Another American Deluxe Tele, this one in Ash, maple neck on blond body. This one did not have a sculpted body, and was marginally heavier than the non-ash Deluxe Tele. I can see why its called a Plank. The tone was somewhat hotter than the other Tele, but not amazingly so. Other than that, they were just about the same playability. One really pleasant surprise that I’d overlooked last week on bot this and the other Deluxe Tele was the little button on the volume control that made the middle position of the selector sound very different (series? parallel? dunno, doesn’t matter) and hotter than ‘normal’ – really good rockin’ tone for both guitars with this activated. Sweet.
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A ‘51 Reissue Tele, faux aged (though restrainedly). This guitar was extremely hot, a really rockin’ tone. But – something was wrong with the neck pickup – some of the volume, and all of the tone had been rolled off, and it sounded really muddy and half there; when the neck pickup was selected, the tone control had no apparent effect on the sound, so this guitar had some wiring issues I guess. The neck was really big and chunky, but I got used to it fairly quickly; I wouldn’t say I loved the shape but it didn’t put me off either. Shame about the neck pickup, I was really thrilled with the overall tone using just the bridge p/u.
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An American Deluxe Strat, rosewood fingerboard. They didn’t have any deluxe maples. In retrospect, I should have also asked for an American
Standard Strat with a maple neck for comparison. Rosewood is actually kind of putting me off on the Fender guitars, I’m really liking the maple necks. OTOH, the sounds of that strat was awesome, a real rocker, and I’d guess that’s the rosewood talking. But I didn’t like the neck that well, and it felt a little cluncky. Bends were as unforgiving as my $200 strat clone. Awesome tone though.
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Another Schecter, a C-1 Plus. Nice looking guitar, not really goth at all, in an orangey flame finish with cream binding, and nicer/more restrained inlays than the C-1 Classic. Very pretty. Unfortunately the action was set high enough for slide guitar, so I sent it to the back of the class. GC guy said he’d get the action fixed for my return engagement on Thursday.
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Yet another Schecter, an Exotic Star I think, but the picture of that guitar on the Schecter site doesn’t match my recollection. This guitar felt exactly the same as the C-1 Classic, I couldn’t find a hair difference. Surprisingly, this guitar and the C-1 Classic cleaned up pretty well when I reigned them back a bit, and sounded pretty good on a clean or blues tone (though not so much as the Tele’s). This axe was a candy red flame thing with a ridiculous studded/flashy binding. It looked like something Dracula would play, ick.
I asked for, but they didn’t have:
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Any higher end Ibanez guitars, just basic models
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Peavey guitars. They only had the basic Peaveys, nothing nicer. They had a trade-in that the GC guy thought was a very nice/hot guitar, though it was pink (!). It was on layaway for someone, but GC guy thought I could play it when I came back on Thursday, just to get an idea if I want to look at more Peaveys.
The GC guy, near the end of the session suggested ESP or Jackson guitars for shreddiness. By that point I was pretty burnt out from playing, so we agreed he’d dig those up for Thursday.
Towards the end, I set the Fender to clean and used a POD, same model as mine, and got a good feel for how these girls would put out at home with my setup. All of them sounded very sweet through the POD, and punched up or added subtleties to the tones I already used.
We talked money, and he threw out that if I was really buying a 1000+ guitar, they could probably (“I’ll ask my manager”) lop another 10% off the marked price. The store’s return policy is 30 days. They sell an extended warranty for $85 for two years. It was basically a deal where they’ll deal with Fender re warranty defects so I don’t have to, and they’ll fix any reasonable issue themselves if they can. I guess this rides on how service-oriented the store is to recent customers, something I don’t have a feel for.
So, on balance, the scorecard:
- American Deluxe Ash Tele, just noses out the next guitar on tone.
- American Deluxe Tele.
- Schecter C-1 classic and C-1 Exotic Star, same as each other.
- '51 reissue Tele. Disqualified.
- American Deluxe Strat, rosewood. Didn’t like the neck feel, tone rocked. Disqualified for illegal bending noise.
- Schecter C-1 Plus. Disqualified, may be back soon.
I’m going to go back Thursday and probably buy something.
Afterthought: I played for more than two hours, and my hands were really tired, I never practice that intensely (yet). What was amazing to me was how good and loose I played after that workout, much better than when I’d sat down two hours ago. I dialed up something obnoxious on the POD and plugged in a Schecter, and let loose some monstrous arpeggio diddle-deedle-diddle yadyada metal thing that I somehow remembered from long ago, and I did it well. The GC guy looked shocked – I’d been doing blues riffs and stuff for the entire time earlier. I guess the muscle memory comes back after enough abuse.
Hmm, could you explain this? I didn’t notice that in my marathon today, and I played two Deluxes. But I wasn’t pounding fret 22 that often.
If you take a look at the bottom left picture in this photo, you’ll see that the neck joint has that little rounded bit sanded off. This helps with upper fret access. Most teles have a sharp(ish) corner there.
See here.
Wow, that is a sweet addition. And one you’d notice when playing, certainly. I guess those Teles wooshed me; if somethings not in the way, I guess its harder to notice than when it is.
Ooh, one thing I forgot from today – I played a reissue Nocaster. It didn’t really stand out that much to me, compared to the Deluxes and that '51 reissue, so I figuratively cast it aside. Minus points for the authentic Nocaster tuners. It cleverly had a place on the body where a logo sticker looked like it had been removed, cute.
And I think I’m conflating some of my impressions of the '51 reissue’s finish with this one’s faux aging.
Yeah. “Reliced” guitars - no thanks.
OK, I’m not quite picturing how having a string fret out above (on a higher fret of lower picth) helps with a bend. I have the bent string under my fingers, so whatever sound it’s going to make is south (bridgeward) of my finger(s). I don’t get how fretting out northward (nut-wards) is really very important. I can see the relationship to a rounded neck influencing this – a (say) B string is “downhill” from the G string, so it hits wood when moved toward the lower wound strings as you move it. But it also slides along the fret its on (that I’m fretting), so bridgeward it doesn’t make much difference.
This speaks to the issue I noted where the Tele I liked “bent” easier in the sense that the strings I wasn’t playing got out of the way – I have a really hard time with bend-noise of other strings jangling as I release (unbend) the string on my cheap strat clone, and I really noticed on the Tele that this was a much much lesser issue. I’m not sure why this is so, but it was demonstrably the case (well, if I demonstrated bending on both instruments). My Strat clone has a very flat neck, on the order of a 4’ radius if you will – not flat, but not far from it. I’m trying to get my head around why the Tele neck would not have this problem as much.
Reading my post above, I should probably clarify that I was thinking of bends on the B or especially high E string – you have to bend those away from your palm, because there’s no neck surface available if you bend them toward your palm.
So – taking the G string as an example: if I bend it away from my palm, the G (or rather my finger that is bending G) touches string A and possibly low-E, and they might jangle as I release the bend. If I bend the G toward my palm, then my bending finger touches the B and possibly the high E, but my left hand fingers are also touching and muting those strings. No jangle. So guess which way I bend the G if possible?
In the E string case, you can’t bend toward you palm, only away. The E string/my finger touches B and possibly G, and there’s no fingers touching them on your left hand to mute them. Jangle jangle. You can mute this with your right hand somewhat.
However, I found that when playing some of these better guitars, I don’t have (as much) issue with the bending janglies even when bending B or E away from my palm, and I’m not sure why this is so.
Ah, it was a Hellraiser C1.
I’m not a fan of the active EMG pickups, but I think that finish is gorgeous. Lots of people disagree, though. They seem like solid heavy metal axes, although you could probably do anything you wanted with it.
Clarifying: I think the thick abalone-ish binding, etc. is a bit much, but the deep red, flamed finish is hawt.
I don’t have much in the way of advice, most of the guitars I’ve been hearing at the coffeehouse are acoustic-electric. I will say that we had a fine high-end Ibanez at the shop last weekend, and it sounded great. Really, really great.
You might want to hold off, and find a store that carries some other guitar brands. Here’s the link to my guitar series, and here’s the link to last weekends show so you can hear the Ibanez.
squeegee - I probably confused things by using the word “can” when I talked about fretting out, like it was a desirable thing. It’s not, and I should have used the word “will”. Here’s what happens. Let’s say you want to bend the high E string a whole step while fretting it at the 15th fret. You push the string away from your palm, toward the middle of the neck. Because of the curve of the fingerboard on a 7.25" radius board, the E string will actually contact a higher fret (16 or 17) as you push it toward the higher center of the fingerboard. This either mutes the string or causes it to sound the note of the higher fret rather than the one you are fretting. The only way this can be prevented on a small radius neck is to raise the action a bit, which is what players did back when 7.25" boards were all that Fender made for Teles and Strats.
Wow - so much to cover and I actually have to work today, too.
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So the ash AmD Tele is basically the same as the alder (first one you played) AmD Tele in terms of features and overall look? You mentioned the lack of a body contour - I would be interested if you could find a pic of the guitar online.
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Sounds like those Teles are still great for you. Given how you reported your impressions, you appear to be reaching your conclusions for the right reasons. Cool.
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As for Ibanez: they are typically very well made, and the necks can be very fast, but they have a completely different vibe and tone vs. Fenders. I guess my point is that they’re kinda apples vs. oranges and you probably have a sense for which feel you really want. Comparing an Ibanez to a Schecter makes a lot more sense - but that is a different issue and if you can buy more than one guitar and you think one should likely be a Fender-ish guitar, then one of those Teles you checked out is still a Go.
I could geek out about Nocasters, relic’ing a guitar (a huge topic amongst guitar types), etc. but that isn’t central to the OP. Sounds like you have a good sense of how to proceed. Keep us posted.
PS: and yeah, I hear you about the comment on playing for two hours and getting warmed up. Playing in a band right now has been wonderful for sharpening my technique and making it more fluid - I have to get the songs right, so I have to practice. The act of practicing forces reps in general techniques, whether it’s scale work on leads or transitions between chords. So I get better, stay motivated and understand that a little more work pays off. It’s a good thing - and, as I say, as far as mid-life hobbies go, it’s a lot cheaper than a Porsche or an affair…