TE-52 NA Vintage Series : Great guitar!

I bought TE-52 as my first HB guitar and after a year of use, I still enjoy playing the guitar.

My guitar was made 10/2018 and after receiving it I was really satisfied. Really great looking two-piece ash body with all the bells and whistles that a T style guitar should have. There are saddle differences in shape between the "real" T guitar, but they are barely noticeable. The ash body is heavy, but I like it.

Default strings (009 gauge) were a little rusty and the frets needed little polishing, but there was no buzzing - all frets and string were fine. I was able to lower the action to personally preferred ~1.5mm (high E)/ ~2mm (low E) at 12th fret without a buzzing at all. The fret ends were not sharp and were nicely filed.

The neck was set up fine and the shape is C (thicker), but that is fine for me. There was a lot of dust everywhere (bellow the tuners an also in the neck slot). The neck fit was tight (even after cleaning the dust) and was seated quite straight. The bridge feels good and does not look cheap, but If you want you can easily upgrade it to the Wilkinson bridge with brass saddles. Because of the classic bridge design without compensation, the intonation is a little bit challenging, but that is the deal with this type of bridge on all T guitars. The ferrules are loose and you have to keep them I check when changing strings, but that is also a normal thing. The dots on the fretboard seems to be printed (?), the skunk-stripe seems to be inserted wood, but the truss rod was inserted in a more modern way under the glued fretboard.

The tuners are leaving some space for perfection. They are holding tuning well, but each tuner feels differently (some loose, some tight), and generally, I would expect a little bit more. String trees do not bind the strings and the nut is plastic with a flat bottom. The string height at the first fret is ok and the guitar was nicely playable.

The wiring was fine and functional with small diameter pots. It was a little bit different from standard wiring but the sound was good. The pickups are fine - if you really want to get to the T sound as close as possible, you might consider an upgrade of the pickups and of the wiring, otherwise, they sound perfectly fine on their own.

Great guitar for the price.