FENDER JV MODIFIED ’60S STRATOCASTER

FENDER JV MODIFIED ’50S TELECASTER & ’60S STRATOCASTER
86
GUITARIST AUGUST 2022
Relics, but they really do suit the 0.009-
gauge strings – heavy hawsers on a thin
neck or thin wires on a big old baseball bat
always seem rather at odds, we feel. String
bending is a doddle, too, and adding wide
vibrato to a tone bend at the 15th fret takes
no effort at all. The guitars’ lightweight
basswood bodies also mean they feel
great on straps, and the satin neck finishes
provide a drag-free playing experience.
Auditioning the JV Modified Telecaster
through our Matchless offers up an
interesting variety of tones, some of which
we’d never heard from any Tele we’ve
played. Listening to the three ‘normal’
sounds first, they are all brighter and quieter
than the same positions on our CS guitar.
However, each setting has an extremely
musical voice, with great clarity and string
separation, and immediately recognisable
as a good example of its species.
4. Three brass saddles and
the classic through-body
Tele stringing make for
a tight and beefy tone.
The black-tipped switch
is a four-way, offering
both pickups in series as
a mighty fine extra sound
5. Necks on both guitars
have what Fender calls
a ‘thick soft V’ profile.
They are slender and
extremely comfortable
Each guitar in the range features a pull
switch on the tone control, designed to
offer sounds not normally associated with
these models. Our Tele’s usual three-way
pickup selector is instead a four-way, with
position 4 (towards the neck) selecting
both pickups in series for a lift in power and
girth. Its push-pull pot puts either of the
‘both pickups on’ selections out of phase
for a decidedly different ‘honky’ Tele tone.
The Strat’s push-pull pot, on the other
hand, simply brings in the neck pickup
when bridge, and middle and bridge are
chosen, so we get neck and bridge together,
or all three pickups on at once. It will be
interesting to see how they fare when
plugged in to our Matchless Lightning test
amp and up against a couple of Custom
Shop ‘control’ guitars.
Feel & Sounds
As mentioned, the action on both guitars
here is spot on. Their necks are profiled
with what Fender calls a ‘thick soft V’ and
we’d put it somewhere between a regular C
shape and the more radical V of many early
Strats and Teles. They are quite slender,
though (21mm at the 1st fret and 23mm at
the 12th). That’s nothing like the chunky
slabs of this reviewer’s own Custom Shop
5
The Tele offers up an
interesting variety
of tones, some we’d
never heard from any
Tele we’ve played
4
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