The Fender Player Plus Fender Nashville Telecaster: Hands on review.

 A versatile tone machine.

More than a decade ago I was in Las Vegas and I visited the Guitar Center and I spent some time trying out what (in my mind) I called a 'Telecaster Stratocaster".  It was a Fender Telecaster body and neck but had a three single coil pickup set up not too dissimilar to that of a Stratocaster.  I am a huge single cut guitar fan and for me I wondered if this could be the guitar for me that would give me Strat tones on a telecaster platform. 

The reality is that this is not a Stratocaster tone machine, it is it's own unique 'thing'. At the time I didn't really appreciate that.  

I didn't purchase that beautiful guitar because, despite at the time the currency rate meant that I could have had it at effectively half price, I also had to get it on a plane. The shop assistant suggested that I remove the neck in order to fold it into my luggage but that seemed absolutely ridiculous (with what I know now, I might have done it, but the thought at the time terrified me!).

I have not touched one since but often thought about these types of telecasters.

They other day I popped into PMT Cambridge  and had an opportunity to take a look at the more recent version of the Fender Nashville Telecaster, the Player Plus. 

The Player Plus Nashville Telecaster® is the latest version of this remarkable guitar but with more modern appointments such as having a 12" fretboard radius, Player Plus Noiseless Telecaster® & Strat® pickups and on the tone pot, a push/pull feature that engages the neck pickup with positions 1 and 2 on the five way switch.  This gives the player the option to have the neck pickup engaged with either just the bridge pickup or in the mix of the bridge and the middle pickup.

Tonally this presents some lovely options to configure one's sound.

The guitar was extremely playable and the neck and body's weight balanced well. The guitar I played had the 'Sienna Sunburst' finish which was pleasing and showed the flame of the Alder wood. On the Fender website I can see that there is an awesome  finish called 'Opal Spark' which is a metallic blue sparkle which would absolutely be my choice if I ever got one.

The comfortable C shaped neck had a  Pau Ferro fretboard and not rosewood and a 'synthetic bone' nut.  I would prefer rosewood aesthetically but playability wise it was great.  

Tonally, this is not a Strat, as I first thought all those years ago.  The guitar itself has the traditional Player Plus Noiseless™ Tele® bridge and neck pickups but the middle pickup is a Player Plus Noiseless™ Strat® pickup.  The Tele pickups sound different to that of the Strat equivalents and of course this guitar doesn't have a trem and is a through body design with the bridge and that brings about a different tone.

The guitar has locking tuning machines and this kept the tuning rock solid and the guitar was strung with nines.

What was my experience of playing the guitar?

This guitar was lovely to play providing that lovely twang that you would expect from a Telecaster.  Whilst I would never think that I could tell the difference between the more vintage fretboard radius on a tele at 7.25" versus the more modern 12" on this guitar, I did find the guitar very easy to play but with the strings being nines and the increased radius, for me, it needed to resist me a little and I would prefer a set of tens on a 10" and a lower radius.  My 72 Reissue Thinline Telecaster has a lower radius.

I found that I could get a nice range of snappy rock n roll tones right through to nice sharp overdriven tones that sit well in a rock setting.

The only thing that I found disappointing was that it felt like the guitar needed a set up (in hindsight that is probably a subjective comment) and I know that PMT don't set up guitars that arrive from their suppliers before putting them out in the shop ( I have been told this by shop assistants there) and so this always results in the risk of not really bonding with a guitar . It's a great guitar but at £850 I would really want to WANT it and I didn't feel that. A set up with a luthier would make it an outstanding guitar but then why should I have to pay for that with a new guitar? 

It is a good guitar and provides a wonderful range of tones with an increased playability that comes with the more modern features.  If you go into a shop, try one out, it is definitely worth doing so.

Find out more about the  Fender Nashville Telecaster, the Player Plus. 

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