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Fender's Hot Rod '50 has a truly vintage vibe

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• Review

Two decades after rebirthing itself from the ownership of CBS, Fender has itself grown into an enormous, powerful corporation.

Now benefiting from two finely honed, huge capacity Stateside production facilities, the big F is nevertheless nimble enough to offer constantly evolving variants on its two favourite guitars.

Take two of their latest Telecasters for example: one is a tweak to the ever-popular American Vintage '52 model from the Corona, USA plant, and another is a Custom Shop-inspired example of the same, albeit hailing from Ensenada which is around 160 miles away in Baja California, the northernmost state of Mexico.

Overview

The Hot Rod '52 has a 'premium ash' three-piece body finished in butterscotch blonde, the 'premium' tag hinting at a more stringent selection process than the Baja Tele's plain ol' 'ash'.

This timber is considered 'best' for fifties-style Teles thanks partly to its appearance and also to its relatively scooped-mid, rich and lively twangin' tone when compared with alder. Premium tag or not, there are still some pretty ugly, dark-coloured knots on the bass side of the guitar.

The American guitar gets treated to Fender's thin-skin nitro-cellulose 'lacquer' coat, which shows signs of sinking into the ash's grain here and there.

So while it doesn't offer a flawlessly flat finish, it's generally considered to be better for tone than being too thick – just like with high-end acoustic guitars. At 8.5lbs, the Hot Rod '52 is no lightweight either.

The Baja Tele arguably gets the prettier pieces of ash in this case – up to four to make up the body by the looks of things – though the grain is only just visible through the milky blonde, gloss polyester finish.

This poly coat is thicker and flatter than the Hot Rod's sure-to-age-gracefully cellulose, and will still be this shiny when all that's left is Keef and the cockroaches.

As for contouring there's nothing in it: both bodies have that substantial slabby feel for which Teles are loved and loathed in equal measure.

Moving to the necks, both guitars receive two important tweaks to vintage spec in the form of a flatter-than-vintage 9.5-inch radius fingerboard and medium-jumbo frets.

The fret jobs are uniformly tidy and well executed, making the most of the flatter 'board radius for problem-free bends anywhere on the neck.

Aesthetically, the fact that the 12th-fret dots are positioned 'wrongly' too close together is an annoyance to this reviewer, but much more importantly, the neck profiles are inviting; a soft 'V' behind the first couple of frets for the Baja Tele, and a marginally clubbier 'U' in the case of the Hot Rod.

As we said last month in the Vintage Hot Rod Strats review, the satin-backed nitrocellulose finish is a qualified success for the Hot Rod series as it still feels stickier than the Baja Tele's full-on gloss polyurethane.