Fender ’69 American Vintage Thinline Telecaster
List Price: $2,399.99

These guitars play like heaven, and use premium components and woods. To test mine, I started off by plugging the ’69 Tele into my pedalboard, which feeds into my vintage Airline amp, which is based on an old Supro. (I would write down my entire signal chain, but that would take another paragraph.) This guitar has a three-saddle bridge, but it also comes with a six-saddle bridge, so if you’re looking to really refine your guitar’s action and intonation, that option is there.

The pickups are hot and bright, especially on the bridge, so I turned down the volume and the tone on my amp and got a nice clean signal. The clean tones definitely stand out in the middle and neck positions. The middle position has that great “in between” sound single-coil guitars are known for, while the neck is nice and warm without getting muddy.

The ’69 Thinline really showed its true colors when I turned on an overdrive or cranked my amp’s volume. The guitar played really well with all of my pedals, but worked especially great with a Marshall-sounding pedal like my Menatone King of the Britains or my Himmelstrutz Fetto Standard. The bridge pickup has a bright crunch, while the neck pickup has a nice growl, but also a bit of a surprising bite that other Teles I’ve played don’t have.