TE-52 NA Vintage Series : A Far Better Guitar Than it's Price Would Suggest

Having read the great reviews for this guitar, I decided to scratch the itch I had for a Telecaster style guitar. The main attributes for me are build quality and through-body stringing on a vintage-looking and feeling guitar. After-all. I have a very clear idea of how I need this thing to sound, so the pickups will be swapped eventually.

On arrival, it was found to be very well packed and had turned up in two days with the packaging undamaged. The guitar itself has survived the journey perfectly, so that is really great. It plays and feels much better than I thought it would and after it had acclimatised properly, I embarked on setting it up to my preference. The frets all needed a bit of polishing with 3500 wet and dry, micromesh and Autosol to rid the roughness on string bends. The frets are beautifully level anyhow, so it was an easy enough job, only to be expected on such an inexpensive guitar. I gave the neck a tiny bit more relief and was amazed how low I was able to take the action. Intonation was pretty much perfect out of the box. Plugging in, I found it pretty quiet for a single coil machine and to my utter surprise, once I'd found the best height, those Roswell pickups gave me exactly what I was looking for in heaps! I'm never going to change them as they want for nothing. The body is is absolutely beautiful, solid and a little, (but not too much) heavy. Cosmetically there were a couple of flaws: It had been damaged at the headstock and first fret with an indentation hehind the nut where the bottom E string had been knocked into it. The finish had also been removed on the edge of the neck and headstoch around it slightly. There was also an inch-long, fairly deep scratch through the finish on the front, which I ran a bead of clear poly lacquer into, flattened it back and polished it until it completely dissapeared. I didn't consider these things good enough reason to return such a great guitar, especially at that price-point. In summary, this really has exceded my expectations to the point that I'd consider it the perfect Tele-style guitar for me. It would stand up against any I've ever played before it and my Gretsch guitars aren't really getting a look in any more. So much guitar for so little money.