Fender have recently introduced a new lineup of guitars in their American Vintage Series. From their press release:
Fender’s American Vintage series introduces an all-new lineup of original-era model year guitars that bring Fender history and heritage to authentic and exciting new life. With key features and pivotal design elements spanning the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, new American Vintage series instruments delve deep into Fender’s roots—preserving an innovative U.S. guitar-making legacy and vividly demonstrating how many of the most desirable instruments of the past can be expertly recreated in look, feel and sound.
The American Vintage Series has long presented some of Fender’s best-selling guitars (their early-’80s introduction, in fact, was one of the first signs that Fender was “back” as the CBS era ended). Today, Fender has boldly cleared the slate to make way for a fresh American Vintage series with new features, new specs and the most meticulous level of vintage accuracy yet. Rather than just replacing the previous models with different ones, the entire vintage-reissue concept has been completely and comprehensively re-imagined—restoring original tooling dies, voicing new pickups, reformulating vintage colors and more—based on actual vintage guitars designers tracked down to ensure even greater accuracy.
All the new American Vintage Series guitars feature thick and slim necks with profiles and edges carefully re-sculpted to reflect even greater period-correct authenticity, with both maple and rosewood fingerboards, vintage-style frets and bone nuts; all-new vintage-style pickups wound to period-correct specs and sound to accurately reflect specific model years, and even specific periods within specific model years; retooled pickguards, parts and hardware designed to accurately reflect specific model years (and again, even specific periods within specific model years), and standard and custom-color finishes re-formulated for even greater period-correct authenticity.
The new guitars are the American Vintage ’56, ’59 and ’65 Stratocaster® models (’56 model also in left-handed version), American Vintage ’58 and ’64 Telecaster® models (’64 model also in left-handed version), American Vintage ’65 Jazzmaster® and American Vintage ’65 Jaguar®. Also, the American Vintage ’52 Telecaster returns to the fold (in right- and left-handed versions) with body, neck and pickups refined with the best features—tones, curves, perimeters, radii and more—from a handful of extraordinary ’52 Telecaster specimens examined by Fender craftsmen.
The following video shows the new models and has some great vintage scenes:
All nine of the Vintage Series models are reviewed in the Holiday 2012 issue of GuitarPlayer Magazine. For the most part, the reviews are good with regard to looks, tone and build. A few had setup issues…easy to correct.
I’ve had pretty good luck (knock on wood) with getting good quality American-made Fenders, but I usually have to tweak the setup a bit to suit my taste.