Both Fender and Musician’s Friend are a bit weak in the picture department. The specs for the American Deluxe mention a contoured body, the specs for the American Deluxe Ash version do not.
The red color looked good to me. Its that red in combination with the binding that put me off. That abalone binding, in combination with the green/white crossed inlays on the neck, added up to such a Devil May Cry/ Buffy / Munsters / Elvis impersonator vibe that it really ruined it for me. Far too weird and busy. If the binding were something restrained, and they let the finish speak for itself, I probably would like the looks of the guitar quite a bit. Take a look at this lady; almost the same guitar, very similar color and finish, but with a straight-up binding. Much better IMHO (YMMV).
Simpler is almost always better - I like the look of the guitar come out via the design, not extra bling. I love the functional curve of a Strat body and how perfect the pickguard works from both a design/manufacture and aesthetic standpoint. And I am not even a Strat guy any more.
When a guitar nut wants to get snobby about fancy-looking guitars, they will often dismiss them as “furniture guitars” - i.e., built with woods and appointments better-serving a piece of fancy furniture. I could do without the dismissive tone; some ornate guitars can look really good, but for my personal definition of guitar cool, I prefer one that is a great tool and whose looks are more form-follows-function… of course YMMV…
On the other hand, It could be worse. 
It looks like one of my kid’s HotWheels!
OK, now we have to start a coolest/ugliest guitar evar! thread. Participants will need to agree to disagree in post#1.
Google “wangcaster.”
I win. 
Oh. my. lord.
The pubic hair pickguard is a nice touch
What. The. Fuck.
You have to admit there’s a certain degree of twisted poetry there, though. After all, we are all aware that the electric guitar has been viewed as a phallic symbol for decades. This just makes it explicit.
So, just to give this thread a happy ending:
I bought a Fender American Deluxe Telecaster, and a Schecter C-1 Classic. I’m going to mull these over, and probably go buy a small combo relatively soon.
Thanks all for the shopping help!
Happy new guitar day, squeegee! Have fun! I actually like that C-1 classic. The neck is a bit blingy, but the quilt finish is hot.
So d’zat mean you’re gonna play 'em both at once? 
Congratulations, and have a great time. Don’t forget to post some clips when you come up for air.
Huge congratulations, **squeegee ** - best of luck with your new purchases! Keep us posted on your impressions and any progress on the combo. Have fun twiddling the knobs!
Thanks.
Yeah, the orangey-burst finish I thought really balanced out those overdone inlays pretty well. I had been playing the blue version, which just wasn’t attractive to me, and my eye lit on this one on the racks – I’m not sure why but the more natural (a relative term) finish balanced things back out for me, where the blue was just wrong. The GC guy thought I was nuts and the blue was awesome! Eye of the beholder and all that.
I made the GC guy put new 9’s on the orange C-1, and crank down the action a bit, so it would match the feel and strings of the blue one. When he was done, I couldn’t tell the two apart when playing, and that nailed it for me. I’d been playing that blue C-1 in the store since last week, and the speedy neck just sucked me in. The Tele sucked me in with the bluesy tone and all-star feel. So I compromised. 
Thanks WordMan.
Hey, if you ever get a chance, maybe you could post a WAV of your Tele set up how you described as “bringing the rock” (I think it was: volume = 7, tone = 3-4, through a fuzz set to gain=3, level = 11, into an amp set to I’m-not-sure-what).
I forgot to add: the Deluxe Tele I bought was one they had still boxed from the factory, never touched by human hands (well, almost) – he brought it out when I said I wanted the Tele, and I played it and (after much tuning) ascertained that this one was also a golden child. And it was flawless on the outside as well. I’m just stoked, and those guitars are now here in my office, challenging me. Awesome day.
I’ve been reading this thread over the last week or so with great interest and just wanted to say congrats!
I love my tele - a 74 bought in 79, until recently the only guitar I ever wanted (my dad left me some money to buy a Gretsch). As has been said - it can do anything it wants.
Beautiful choices - I know you will love the tele, hope the Schecter does it too!
MiM
You basically have it - I also have a tone control on my fuzz that I set pretty low. But a few points
[ul]
[li]For the amp - I am using a tube amp with a very simple circuit (a Fender Tweed Deluxe with old 6V6 tubes) - if you shove more signal down its throat, it goes straight to work on the circuit to overdrive it and deliver the tone. I strongly doubt a solid state amp would respond in a similar way - heck, I don’t even know if a tube amp that has a lot of bells and whistles on it will respond as favorably - many just squeal the second they get outside their standard parameters. [/li][li]I set the amp to just “have a little hair” - another phrase is “right when the signal breaks up” - I described this in a “jargon for geeks thread” here (see OP). My amp is set to about 7; it can really vary from amp to amp, but you want to just be losing the clean signal and getting a bit of edge and crunch on barre chords when you strike them crisply. But if you use a very light touch - say to play Boston’s More than a Feeling riff, it sounds pretty clean and you can year each note distinctly…you want that balance, where it all depends on how strongly you strike the strings - hard = crunch, but soft can = clean…[/li][li]Play with the Tone and Volume of your guitar. Again, this is key: please note that although it is labeled “Volume” it really doesn’t change the LOUDNESS of your guitar except maybe dialing from 4 down to 0 - of course sound will cut out. But from about 4 up to 10, sure the loudness changes a bit, but not all that much on a relative basis. But what changes is how “hairy” - i.e., crunchy (gain) and squeally (feedback) you are adding to the signal. So the Volume control is, in effect, changing the tone of the guitar - and the Tone control works on top of that to tame your highs if they get too ice-picky. Does this make sense? If it does, then realize when you have the Volume on 10, you are adding a ton of crunch and squeal. For single-note melodies - i.e., leads - this is great because you thicken up the note (gain) and make it more lively (feedback). But for chorded rhythms - such as down-stroke rhythm chunking - like the intro to Green Day’s Basketcase (“Do you have the time, to listen to me whine…”) the barre chords would sound fuzzy and messy on 10. If you back the volume off a bit - to maybe 7-8 you can take some squeal out, keep the gain in, and make the chord much punchier. Try it.[/li][li] In my case, with my simple amp that I can push a ton of signal down - I can have it so overloaded that rolling the guitar’s volume down to 4 still yields a crunchy, gained up rock tone while cutting the squeal. It can really vary - at the least, you need to try rolling things off to 7-8 and see if those rhythm chords sound crisper and, well, chunkier…[/li][/ul]
So that’s a start on Knob Twiddling 101 - I am sure Ogre, Crotalus, Burton, **MiM ** (great set of initials to have in this thread, given Fender’s Made in Mexico nickname of MIM) have things to add…
Glad to hear that other Dopers find this geekiness / discussion of the craft of playing interesting…
Okay - so it that the post where I just went off the deep end geek-wise?
Help me out Doper guitarists - any knob twiddlers out there? You ever notice how BB King is constantly…adjusting his knobs? Boy, that sounds weird when you see it typed out - but you know what I mean! 
No - I’m still with you!
My tele is so versatile what with the tappes humbucker and all, I can’t keep my hand of my knob(s). Not that Joe Public notices largely, but it pleases me to have such control.
MiM
Damn edit time!
Obviously ‘tapped’ not ‘tappes’.
Its a 74 USA swamp ash natural finish with 3 ply tortoiseshell scratchguard. Humbucker was added before I got it, though I have has it replaced and had the wiring sorted properly by Cardiff luthier Dave Dearnley. (I’d love one of his tele’s BTW)
I get a kick out of, in the ‘My Sharona’ solo, switching from the bridge pup almost up to 10 - to the neck/middle (4th switch postion), ease back on the tone and volume - pull the coil tap volume knob, and - voila! singing like a strat. Then back to the tele crunch for the slamming chords out of the solo.
What wanton hubris!
MiM