Full page NYT ad for Fender American Vintage II series

Boudoir Guitar

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Interesting - American made, nitro finish, vintage spec, at Fender prices rather than Custom Shop prices.

These were brought to my attention when a 79 year old that I have coffee with most mornings showed me a full page ad in the print edition of the NYT for the '51 telecaster. Which I guess tells us who the market for these is.
 
Love the Fiesta Red Strat but don't love the 7.25 radius.

I've been very happy with my “Wildwood Thin Skin” Strat I picked up a few months ago. Love everything about it. I've realized though, that the cool-looking clay inlays and side dots are damn near impossible to see in low lighting, it's actually quite extreme. Not sure if that's enough to send me looking, because I really do love it and the specs are hard to find at a reasonable price.
 
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The '72 has my eye. Glad to see Fender finally make the humbucker thinline above the "great value and sounds great once you completely gut everything but the neck/body!" Price point.
 
These are supposed to be vintagey. I get it. But seriously, fuck off with the heel adjustment for the truss rod. No one’s bringing back air-cooled engines to cars.
 
I'm glad Fender still puts out models that are pretty much spot on with what you'd get back in the early years. IMO, aside from the radius and fret size, Leo got the Strat right in 1954 right out of the gate.

From what I've seen, the biggest problem they run into with these vintage lines is they're damned if they do, damned if they don't. I thought the Vintera line would do really great for them, but I think it's a thing where people have such strong preferences for certain specs, so they won't buy a vintage reissue if it's 100% true to specs because they might dig a 2-point bridge or a flatter radius. Conversely, the guys who strongly prefer the vintage specs have no interest in a lot of modern stuff (I'm in this camp).

The price tags don't help at all these days. It's why I went MJT/Musikraft for my Gilmour Strat instead of buying a used AVRI; they were all $2K+, especially Candy Apple Red ones, so I'm not surprised this is where Fender's pricing is at now. At this point, it seems entirely daft to me to buy any off the shelf Fender if you need to make a single concession/compromise when doing so when you can build a partscaster for around a grand less than any US-made Strat.
 
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