Fender American Vintage II 1975 Telecaster Deluxe Pg. 2

[HNB]

It looks like a good guitar overall, you know? Any factory can make some mistakes. The lack of shielding concerns me under there but you can get to that later. The overall guitar looks very good, though, and the pickups seem great.

I agree with you. I think it will work out. I have seen mistakes from loads of builders. It happens.

[Tehz_]

Didn't mean to be a negative nancy, I'm willing to bet the first example is a rare occurance. If I were you, I'd be very excited to have one of those on the way!

[daCod]

F tuners would be more correct for sure, but that doesn’t bother me spec wise.

actually the deluxes never had F back tuners. cast fender stamped style with the locking nuts ala grover. they're really great tuners imho.

here's the listing (long gone) for my old 1977 darker headstock thanks to nitro overspray. tuners, bridge, factory strat knobs with drilled in zero markers on the guard. thick poly finish. amazing neck. and those beyond killer pickups.

https://reverb.com/item/6372569-fender- ... 1977-mocha

the new AVII's look to have nailed the look/details better than any of the previous releases with the proper bridge, tuners, headstock - although the 75's did say made in usa under the "TER" on the decal.

only qualm is the knobs. they're not EXACTLY the same as the originals (flat chrome cap vs. dished) but oh well easy enough swap for the crazies, such as myself. really want to know how the neck feels in hand though. hopefully end of the year my local shops will have them available. cant wait to get my hands on one!!!

[HNB]

Didn't mean to be a negative nancy, I'm willing to bet the first example is a rare occurance. If I were you, I'd be very excited to have one of those on the way!

I am still excited. I am only worried that the next batch will be plain bursts and I will end up with an ordinary looking body. Nothing wrong with that, but I picked the one in the video because (even though it was three pieces) it had interesting grain patterns that made it stand out to me.

[HNB]

Troglys video today had my replacement. He was able to correctly center the neck. Still surprising how these EXPENSIVE guitars continue to have stupid QC stuff.

[HNB]

Should arrive Friday via FedEx unless something funky happens. I am excited to hear how the new ones compare to the vintage ones.

[JVG]

actually the deluxes never had F back tuners. cast fender stamped style with the locking nuts ala grover. they're really great tuners imho.

Can’t believe i didn’t know this - i never looked that closely, and had assumed they were F-tuners like most of the reissues and strats of the era.

[HNB]

It arrived last night and I unboxed this morning. I am super happy with it other than the neck dots seem to be slightly off center. I also prefer narrow string spacing, so I might change the bridge out to one with modern string spacing. I prefer my e's to be further from the edge of the fretboard. It sounds good! The modern cunife humbuckers are louder than the vintage ones and have a wider tone range than my vintage ones. The neck is a little more bassy and the bridge is a little brighter than my vintage set. Now my vintage set could be off the norm, but they are the only ones I have to compare to as to what they should sound like. They are similar to the brandonwound and novak ones if you are unsure what to spend money on. I don't notice a huge difference in sounds between the new ones. TBH I kind of like the brandonwound ones the best, but it could be that the sassafras Bilt is just something special. Here are pictures while I wait on the audio demo to upload.

20221203_113028 by Hentai No Baka, on Flickr

20221203_113047 by Hentai No Baka, on Flickr

20221203_113057 by Hentai No Baka, on Flickr

20221203_113107 by Hentai No Baka, on Flickr

20221203_113120 by Hentai No Baka, on Flickr

20221203_113124 by Hentai No Baka, on Flickr

[BoringPostcards]

Sweet! Good score. I’ve got one of the Mexican versions. I plan on upgrading the pickups at some point to the proper CuNiFe ones.

[HNB]

Thanks! I did the video demo and learned for these ones that lower is better in my ears. Here are the videos I made.

Normal pickup height.
https://youtu.be/bwbw6uHt__M

Lowered closer to the pickguard.
https://youtu.be/6qSPebhyhHQ

[HNB]

Here is a demo with the new Eminence green back style speakers. I like it!

https://youtu.be/oRfuP7_s8-Q

[Embenny]

Those speakers sound nice. I'm sure they'll be even nicer once they're broken in.

For the pickup height, after listening to the two videos, here's what I think I would do: bridge pickup up high, neck pickup down all the way, then raise the adjustable poles up quite significantly.

It'll pull more single coil-like definition out of the neck pickup, without overwhelming the output of the bridge pickup.

[HNB]

Cool. I haven't ever messed with pole pieces before.

[Embenny]

Cool. I haven't ever messed with pole pieces before.

Oh man, that's a whole world to open up right there.

The thing that affects a pickup's output more than anything else is its distance to the strings. I believe it was Bill Lawrence who said that doubling the distance between the pickup and the string cuts the output by 60% (and cuts low end more than high end).

So imagine that you have a humbucker 5mm from the strings, and drop it to 10mm. The output from both coils has dropped by 60%. Now, you raise one set of polepieces by 5mm. You now have one coil at the same output as before, but the second one is 60% quieter. If both coils are identical, the overall output is only 30% lower, but one coil is contributing 60% less to the final tone.

That brings the overall tone and dynamic response much closee to a single coil - it's like dialing one coil down 60% with a spin-a-split, only without compromising the humbucking function in any way.

You can even go as far as to remove one set of polepieces entirely, which essentially turns the humbucker into a single coil with a noise canceling dummy coil. This was an extremely popular mod with the original WRHBs in the neck position in particular - six poles can be unscrewed from the top, and six from the bottom of the pickup. So people would pull out the six hidden ones and leave it looking stock but sounding much, much clearer.

I've actually tried the 6-screw mod on every type of humbucker I own, including a Creamery PAF-sized WRHB. In that case, it pretty much turned it into a noiseless Tele pickup.

But you can do every shade in between, from a 1mm height differential all the way to removing six poles entirely. And in the case of WRHBs, if you like the sound of the pickup with six poles raised way up but you don't like the look, you can flatten the top-adjustable ones down to the cover and partially unscrew the six hidden ones from the bottom (as long as you still have clearance in the rout).

I raise up the screw poles on all my PAF style humbuckers, it really restores a lot of clarity and bite to them without losing much low end or mids.

It's probably the most underutilized tone adjustment on a guitar. Way bigger impact than swapping out pots etc, and way quicker too. No disassembly...just a few seconds with a screwdriver.

[HNB]

I will give it a try.