OffsetGuitars.com

Looks like you can choose maple and pau ferro for the fingerboards, but not rosewood.

Also looks like we are getting the 2 and the 3. Just saw both on Reverb.

Woohoo!

Yeah, and in neon green, also.

https://reverb.com/item/31349735-fender ... -pre-order

Interesting theres a Neon Green Fender Lead II reissue - wonder whether St Vincent had anything to do with it

Undoubtedly they keyed off of that, for sure.

Sadly, no Roger Miller signature

I always wonder what the difference is between the X-1 pickups and modern Fender Alnicos. I don't think there's much, is there? I just always thought the X-1 pickups were a little "hot" for their age but are in pretty common tolerances now even with pickups that Fender puts in their American Standard type lines (I forget that they are now).

So I'm not sure what there would really be to reissue with those. I am pretty sure that the Lead 3 pickups could have been more accurately recreated, that would have been cool, but whatever.

With a Roger Miller reissue it would have to be with Seymour Duncans or something. I sometimes doubt that Fender even knows who Roger Miller is.

There were times I doubted if Fender even knew what the Lead was.

But this is good to see! I am happy that they've brought this guitar back. I never understood the lack of success with the Lead since it's a great guitar platform and a very good looking guitar. You could quibble with the narrow nut, of course, but overall it's a design that they did very well.

Of course, you have to overlook the incredible failure that is the finish problems on the early models ("early" of a three years run) which my Lead has in spades. I am going to guess that this just poisoned the Lead in the marketplace, and post CBS Fender just didn't feel like struggling to rehabilitate a failed model in the public's eyes at that time.

Maybe enough time has passed that people will give it a closer look, and the smaller body shape would really work well for people of certain statures like St. Vincent above.

Weight
11.95 LB

Sweet Jesus, that's a boat anchor!

I know, period-correct, but jeeze, they could have fixed that.

Maybe they are using period correct raw, green wood for maximum 70's toanz.

Larry Mal wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 19, 2020 10:09 am

Maybe they are using period correct raw, green wood for maximum 70's toanz.

Or maybe we've been pronouncing it wrong! It's named after the element!

I wonder how heavy mine is... I don't think it's that heavy. I never felt it was anything exceptional.

Of course, a lot of the heavy paint has fallen off over the years... everyone knows that thick 70's poly finish adds like eight pounds in and of itself.

Yeah it's not lead as in 'lead guitar', it's lead as in plumb 'very heavy metal'

Larry Mal wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 19, 2020 6:35 am

I always wonder what the difference is between the X-1 pickups and modern Fender Alnicos. I don't think there's much, is there? I just always thought the X-1 pickups were a little "hot" for their age but are in pretty common tolerances now even with pickups that Fender puts in their American Standard type lines (I forget that they are now).

The X-1 is just an alnico single coil wound with 9600 turns (giving a resistance of over 7k). It was revolutionary and legendary in its day because stock fenders were still generally being wound with around 7600 turns of 42 AWG IIRC, which is in the neighborhood of 6k or less.

Remember, this was the era when people like Seymour Duncan and Larry DiMarzio were blowing people's minds by doing extremely simple things like using 43 AWG wire to over wind hotter pickups that drove amps harder.

Aftermarket pickups were a tiny niche market compared to today. Most people didn't know much about them and certainly weren't going to gamble large amounts of money on them for a new guitar they just bought. It's not like there were sound samples and guitar forums around back then.

So, if you walked into a music store in 1979, picked up a shitty 11lb late 70's strat, switched to the 5.9k lead pickup with no tone knob through a Marshall and tried to play Judas Priest or Thin Lizzy or whatever, you'd rightly ask yourself what the hell that guitar was good for.

If you picked up the Lead II next to it, with 7.5k X-1 pickup and a master tone that affected the bridge position, you'd probably get some tones much closer to the ones you were hoping for.

And thus, the X-1 rightly earned a reputation of being a good pickup - at least, the kind that players wanted at the time.

There's not any more magic to it than that.

Sure- they are very good pickups, also.

Also I remember that the X-1 was only ever used outside of the Lead in the bridge position only of some late CBS Strats- some of the "Dan Smiths" as I recall, although I don't remember if the X-1s were used in the two knob Strats with the Freeflyte tremolo system that they call the "Dan Smiths" or the more standard three knob Strats from that same era also called "Dan Smiths", or both.

So I guess that was an early Fender attempt to beef up the Strat bridge pickup, resolving a common complaint, although it seems like they later just gave up and put humbuckers in there like everyone else since that's what the market was really calling for.

Maggieo wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 19, 2020 9:59 am

Weight
11.95 LB

Sweet Jesus, that's a boat anchor!

I know, period-correct, but jeeze, they could have fixed that.

It's not an accurate figure, imo. I was at NAMM this week and I got to play and strum a few of them and they seemed fairly light to me. Contours on the bodies seem somewhere between the thicker early ones and thinner later ones. All in all, seems like it's gonna be a cool guitar for Fender and I hope people pick up on it.

Figures I was halfway through my project Lead when this happened though

mbene085 wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 19, 2020 4:56 pm

The X-1 is just an alnico single coil wound with 9600 turns (giving a resistance of over 7k). It was revolutionary and legendary in its day because stock fenders were still generally being wound with around 7600 turns of 42 AWG IIRC, which is in the neighborhood of 6k or less.

Remember, this was the era when people like Seymour Duncan and Larry DiMarzio were blowing people's minds by doing extremely simple things like using 43 AWG wire to over wind hotter pickups that drove amps harder.

Well, seems interesting finding a similar set to swap the chinese Player Series pickups they put into it...