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Fender has been making guitars since Leo Fender closed his radio repair and set up guitar and amp building in 1946. The Acoustasonic takes a classic body shape, the Telecaster, mixes it with a fully-hollow body, and gives you a mix of Fishman Piezo and a magnetic bridge pickup to blend between. But there’s something more here.
The Telecaster is a single-cutaway electric guitar that was first mass produced in 1950. Everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Jimmy Page has played one at times. (Springsteen is famous for using an Esquire version with a single pickup, Page used one on the studio recording of “Stairway to Heaven.”)
The Acoustasonic Player Telecaster solves a problem that has plagued guitarists for ages. Different companies have tried solving it, but Fender has an interesting solution that does things just a bit differently. Let me explain:
Guitar players want to play songs, and may need to change guitars to get a different sound. Sometimes, this means changing every song, and sometimes it means changing mid-song. “Stairway to Heaven” for example, begins with a 12 string guitar, and then changes to an electric guitar. In the studio, this was a 12 string acoustic, and the aforementioned Telecaster.
What if you wanted to change more rapidly? What if you wanted to change sounds while in live performance?
Acoustasonic Telecaster Player gives you a simplified approach to the controls to allow you to make these changes while playing.
The controls
- 3-way Voice selector
- Blend control
- Master Volume control
As I understand it, there are essentially 6 voices available, 3 with the blend knob on the Fishman piezo (acoustic sound), 3 with the N4 noiseless magnetic pickup, and any mix that combines those two pickups in between.
The construction
Since this is a fully hollow bodied instrument, we should talk about what that means. Most electric guitars are solid body, essentially a thick block of wood cut in the shape of a guitar, with routing for pickups and controls.
A semi-hollow body guitar is mostly solid, but has maybe about 40% of the wood removed, with a sound hole. The moving top of the guitar changes the amplified sound.
Here, the entire body of the guitar is hollow. The back and sides are made of mahogany, and the top is spruce, just like you’d find on a traditional acoustic guitar.
If the image of the sound hole on the Acoustasonic Telecaster Player is any indication, the top is much thicker than a traditional acoustic guitar, which should help it avoid feedback from amplifiers.
The bridge and neck fingerboard are rosewood. The neck is a bolt-on mahogany one, a change from much of Fender’s history with maple necks.
The strings used are acoustic bronze wound strings, rather than nickel-wound electric strings. Even so, the guitar appears to have playability like an electric.
The Fender Acoustasonic Telecaster Player is available in brushed black, butterscotch blonde, shadow burst, and arctic white. Retail is set at $1999 USD. Check them out at Fender.com
