TE-52 NA Vintage Series : Twang it is.

I'm just a home hobbiest when it comes to musical instruments. I played bass in high school in a couple of garage bands over 40 years ago and recently retired. So I saw these TE-52's and thought I'd give one a try as my old Squier Strat from the 90's was looking kinda lonesome over in the corner and some of the controls were needing some TLC but she doesn't look appealing enough for romance.

Well I watched a few reviews on the TE-52 and the price was right for me, so I pulled the trigger and bought one. I think it took about three weeks to make it to Texas from the time of purchase.

Pros

This guitar looked great our of the box. The overall finish was flawless. The wood grain was visually appealing, the neck had a satin finish on the back, which I like versus a sticky neck, and it didn't have any dings or blemishes.

Cons

This guitar was not gig ready out of the box. But for the price point, I fully expected to have to do a setup on it.

Fretwork. The frets had visible machine marks on the tops and were very scratchy out of the box. The ends were sharp and rough on the hands.

Neck. The neck arrived out of alignment. I had to loosen the screws on the back at the joint and realign the neck to correct the side to side alignment of the string track over the neck. There's a little excess play in the neck joint and if it shifts again, I may need to put a shim in it. As of now, six months later, it has not moved.

I also had to adjust the relief a little.

I changed the string trees to rollers and the saddles to brass, just because I wanted to. I don't think there was anything wrong with the original components.

Summation

All in all I am pleased with this purchase. Yeah, there's some time involved in setting up the instrument before it's ready to jam, but once it's properly setup, the frets are crowned and polished, it's fun to play. The only thing missing in the box was the man card, because this guitar has testoterone in its dna.