The Fender Les Paul?? - Fender's Best Kept Secret!

hey guys welcome back to the channel today we're looking at fender's answer to the les paul let's check it out yes welcome back to the channel hope you guys are having a great day today as i mentioned we've got fender's version of the gibson les paul in the studio so what we're going to do today is find out well just how close this is to a les paul maybe do a little a b test between my gibson les paul and this baby and find out what it's all about right let's take a quick tour through this guitar so we can see well just how close it is to a les paul now the exact model of this guitar is defender special edition custom telecaster fmt hh that's a terrible name for this guitar that's like ibanez bad i would have just called it the fender telecaster lp and been done with it anyway i will link to this guitar in the video description below if you want all the details on it because i'm not going to say that again but anyways let's get into it and uh yeah see how close it is to a les paul so let's start with some obvious similarities now every time this guitar is listed it always has at the top of the list flame maple carved top and i'll just try to catch it in the light a little bit but it's got a really nice subtle carve to the top and if you guys know telecasters you know they all just have that straight slab top very utilitarian very basic so to see a nice little carve on this is uh is pretty cool and it's listed as a carved maple top so i believe it's a solid piece of maple so that's really cool so that's obviously the first you know comparison with a gibson les paul to have a solid you know carved maple top now on the back you guessed it a telecaster with a mahogany body so that's kind of like the les paul recipe mahogany body carved maple top so far so good well the neck is also mahogany so i'll just take a shot of it here and guess what satinac things are starting to get a little more interesting you can see the heel of the body kind of comes forward and the neck kind of gets glued onto that and then goes into the body so yes we've got a mahogany neck mahogany body carved maple top set neck very different than any other telecaster well it reminds me a little bit of my ja90 i had that guitar for a while if you guys watch the channel i ended up trading or selling that one off a year or two ago but it kind of reminds me a little bit like of that with the set neck and everything but yeah really cool guitar and even though it is multiple um layers of mahogany i think they did a really good job matching up the color so you don't see those different laminations through there so yeah mahogany body there you guys go now in terms of the pickups well we've got a seymour duncan 59 and the pearly gates so that makes me think that this thing is going to hold up pretty well up against the last pole but time will tell we'll see as i mentioned we've got a coil split here but very simple volume tone three-way switch got to give a shout out to the metal output jack love to see that on guitars also got to give a shout out to the oversized strap buttons great features for sure so all the basic ingredients of a les paul are right here now that being said of course you get some of the fender goodness along the way namely you don't have to fight with a three plus three headstock design and that 17 degree headstock tilt here you've got the tried and true straight pull six inline tuning machines very very good now just basic tuners on here they feel pretty good but i know this model quite well so i know the graphtec ratios will drop straight in zero modifications so if you do want to upgrade to lockers you can do that and of course this is priced way lower than a gibson les paul so that's fantastic graphite nut here which is good we'll talk about the nut and the fretwork in a second but yeah so you get some of that fender goodness of course it's a through body design got to give a shout out to the string ferrules which are flush mounted here as well i think we'll pull the cavity cover off i'm curious to see what kind of pots are here i'm assuming since it is kind of like a little bit higher than that player series uh that will get full-sized pots but let's put it on the bench and take a look all right let's take a look inside i've taken the screws off but i have not looked inside yet so here we go let's do that together uh nice shielding here on the back and you know what looks nice and clean in there we've got full size pots right there and of course this is our push pull unlabeled but full size so yeah there you guys go that's just a look inside the cavity looks like there's a shielding inside there as well so yeah everything looks nice so no surprises there great to see full-size pots and yeah high quality kind of wiring and pots all right you guys let's start by looking at some of the fretwork now i gotta say this is some of the nicest fretwork i've seen on a fender like ever really impressed with this guitar you know with my player series guitar and some of the other player series ones i've seen i haven't been super impressed and yeah like i said on my own guitar very very poor but here you can see it doesn't matter where we are in the neck i'll just kind of like scroll down move down stop and pause at random frets they're all nice and shiny on the front face so very very smooth and all the fret ends are like really really good so very impressed with this guitar in terms of like the overall fret work and the nut looks really good as well just take a shot of there so we've got a graphite nut so you know again what i would consider a step up from just the basic um you know plastic nuts that you find on the player series no insert on the truss rod there and of course we get that really beautiful you know kind of embossed look on the fender logo so i think that looks really great as well yeah as i mentioned this is a used instrument i just picked it up used but yeah overall abalone kind of oversized dot inlays which gives it a very unique look but yeah just scrolling and looking at the fretwork gotta say even right to the top frets love to see that so yeah overall like fretwork and playability on this guitar is phenomenal well it's time to plug these guitars in and do a little a b comparison and just see how close the telecaster comes to my gibson les paul standard there it is now it should be mentioned that the gibson is probably a full three times more expensive than the telecaster that's what's so beautiful about teles is even in sort of a deluxe form like this they're still relatively affordable so that's the beautiful part but anyway what i want to do at least in this video is just see how close fender's version of the lp comes to the real thing so what i'm going to do is i'm going to play the les paul first just to kind of establish that bass line then i'll follow it up with the telly and see how close it comes [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] oh hey so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] now before we talk about the tone comparison i just want to give you guys some quick individual tones here neck middle and bridge just so you can hear this guitar in isolation let's start at the neck pickup [Music] um [Music] [Music] [Music] uh [Music] well let's talk about the tone comparison pretty interesting stuff now it should be mentioned these guitars have completely different pickups so you're going to expect some you know slight differences in output some slight differences in eq profile that being said you know considering we're talking about a fender versus a gibbs in here i thought they sounded remarkably similar at least you could get the same spirit of the les paul on that telecaster and of course there's some huge advantages to having the telly like i talked about you know that straight string pull you know non-tilt back on the headstock but you still get that beautiful arched you know flame top a mahogany body that kind of stuff um and there's also a couple other advantages now one of those big advantages is the weight here we go let's put the telly on the scale 6.6 pounds somewhere right around that range can you imagine a les paul at 6.6 pounds i mean you think a guitar seven and a half eight pounds is pretty light until you pick up something you know in that six to seven range so 6.6 pounds for this uh this telly absolutely phenomenal so that pretty much wraps up what i want to say about this guitar i will just quickly mention you know a few things about playability because that's so important when you're thinking about buying a new guitar this one is exceedingly easy to play it's so easy to live with and you know that has to do with all the playability features so with the carved top there's just sort of a natural roll back from the center so nothing digs into your forearm on the right hand and on the back side you do get a nice belly scoop here and as i mentioned that heel joint that just sort of naturally slopes back this way and everything is nicely rounded there so you know you combine that with the crazy light weight and this thing's just so easy to play and live with i should mention also the fingerboard radius is flatter than your typical fender the number escapes me right now but you can check it out uh in the video description uh in the specs so yeah that's just kind of like an overview of this guitar so lightweight so comfortable and you know tones comparable to a les paul even though it's it's obviously it's its own guitar but yeah if you're looking for that type of tone man this is a cool instrument thanks so much for watching it's always fun for me to bring you know an interesting and unusual instrument to share with you guys and this one definitely falls in that category so if you enjoy videos like this be sure to subscribe to the channel we got lots of great content lined up for you guys so subscribe to the channel other than that hope you guys have a great week take care

Channel: Darrell Braun Guitar

Views: 60,425

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Id: iHZmbJXqwXc

Length: 13min 15sec (795 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2021