It was the worst kept secret in guitar, but now it’s official: Troy Van Leeuwen and Squier have unveiled the latest addition to the Fender-owned brand’s Paranormal series, a 12-string reimagining of the Telecaster, replete with signature details and a price tag that puts it within reach of a wider demographic.
The Telecaster celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. There have been some sweet-looking Teles in that time. But finished in a metallic Copper Age paint job, with a tortoiseshell pickguard, Squier’s Troy Van Leeuwen Telecaster XII could hold its own with any one of them.
There’s a lot to like; there is a lot to tune. Just look at that 6x6 headstock, outfitted with vintage-style machine heads. But we have been lucky enough to play this unorthodox and quite brilliant guitar, and the best compliment we can pay it is that it’s well worth the effort of tuning a dozen strings before playing. Its wider 1.6875mm nut gives your fretting hand a bit more room.
Also, Squier has made it a little easier than most 12-string guitars with a very user-friendly bridge that is configured for top-loading and stringing up through the body – it’s a design that takes some of the pain out of string changes (and helps tuning stability).
This Telecaster XII has a solid nyatoh body, a bolt-on maple neck, an Indian laurel fingerboard, and has an origin story that takes us all the way back to Queens Of The Stone Age’s …Like Clockwork era. Fender was working on Van Leeuwen’s signature Jazzmaster, but they had other irons in the fire, too.
Speaking to MusicRadar in July, the morning before Queens Of The Stone Age took to the stage at London’s Tottenham Stadium in support of System Of A Down, Van Leeuwen reveals that it all started when he commissioned Master Builder Paul Waller of the Fender Custom Shop to make him a double-necked electric guitar.
There was only one problem: it was going to take some time. Waller said it would be six months, maybe even a year, before the double-neck was finished.
“I was working with Paul Waller because I was like, ‘I need a double-neck for this record, because there’s 12-string and six-string everywhere,’” says Van Leeuwen. “In the process of making that double-neck – which I’ve been playing a lot during this tour – he was like, ‘I really, really want you to play a Fender, so can I make you something in the meantime while you’re waiting for your double-neck?’ And I was like, ‘Sure! I’ve always wanted a Tele 12-string.’”
Waller was well up for the challenge.
“I love him,” says Van Leeuwen. “He’s like, ‘Well, let me just make you a Fender Tele, a simple Tele with a 12-string neck.’”
A 12-string Telecaster is a rare sight indeed. Bruce Springsteen has played one, as has Robin Zander of Cheap Trick. The Fender Custom Shop made a run of them for a short while in the late ‘90s. But you don’t see them every day (little wonder Squier considers it weird enough to release Van Leeuwen’s Tele XII as part of its Paranormal Series).
Van Leeuwen had some requests for his Custom Shop model. He had a Burns 12-string that he really liked, and wanted Waller to copy the neck.
“I’ve had this Burns Double Six for ever,” he says. “Man, it’s a really great sounding 12-string guitar, and the cool thing about it is that the neck is super wide, and you can really get in there and play it like… like the ham-fisted guy that I am. [Laughs] I was like, ‘For that guitar, please copy the neck of the Burns.’ And so I’ve been playing that guitar onstage – and Dean and I share it for different songs – for the last 14 years.”
Fender and Van Leeuwen launched his signature Jazzmaster in 2014. It is still on the market, and has history been a unit-shifter for Fender. Van Leeuwen says it still sells “pretty well”.
When Fender reached out to him to see if he was interested in doing something new they could put out, he had just the idea. The market isn’t over-saturated with affordable 12-strings. What about the Tele?
“I’m like, ‘I’ve always wanted to do a Squier.’ Just because I have that thing where it’s like, when I was a kid, I didn’t have money, and every guitar that I’d have to just scrounge up for was like a Squier,” he says. “Or some cheap pawn shop guitar. And so I just wanted something affordable, ‘cos not many people play 12-string guitars and they’re usually really expensive. Maybe we could do a Squier. It’s a very much a simplified version of that same Custom Shop [Tele].”
It’s a fixer-upper too. If you were of a mind to buy one, there’s also scope for upgrading the Fender-designed Alnico single-coil pickups if you wanted a more premium pairing. But Van Leeuwen is kind of tickled by the fact that you don’t need to do that. It sounds good as it is. He didn’t see any need to do anything to it before playing it live onstage – and on television, too.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s funny because I played on this show, the Jimmy Kimmel show, the other night with Michael Stipe,” he says. “Andrew Watt asked me to jump up there and play, and I was like, ‘Well, I’m gonna break this thing out. See what it does.’ So that was the debut of the Troy Van Leeuwen Squier Telecaster XII. So cool.”
And with that, the cat was out of the bag. Van Leeuwen posted about it on his Instagram page. There would be a new 12-string Telecaster on the market – officially for the first time as a regular production model – and it would bear his signature on the neck plate. It might well be the pick of the litter from this year’s Paranormal Series.
Maybe it’s time Fender took a leaf out of Squier’s book and launched its own Paranormal range. Van Leeuwen agrees. But he argues you don’t need Fender on the headstock to make a guitar roadworthy. His Telecaster XII has already proven it’s one tough beast. This is a 12-string that cannot be killed.
“Well, here’s a funny story,” says Van Leeuwen. “They sent me a prototype, the first of them. Maybe it was the first sort of factory test. And they sent it to my house, and the guy who delivered it, he ran over it on the way out of the driveway, in the box. [Laughs]”
Now, this kind of thing is not considered best practice in quality control, but it does go some way to proving that the hardiness of the Fender Telecaster translates to the 12-string format.
Van Leeuwen says it just needed the twist of an Allen key and it was good to go.
“Yeah, I picked it up, and I didn’t know it until I opened it up,” he says. “And I was, like, ‘I mean, the action’s really high,’ but it didn’t break or anything! [Laughs] It was just like maybe the truss rod needed to be tweaked a bit.
“But I always like stuff like that because it’s definitely roadworthy. I love that. More than anything, I like guitars that are roadworthy. I leave all my vintage stuff at home. Anything that I can just take on the road and it works is something that I will always want.”
The Troy Van Leeuwen Telecaster XII is available now, priced £509/$599. See Fender for more details.
Queens Of The Stone Age’s new album, Perfecth, is out October 30 via Matador.
