Cons: The "acoustic" selection has that Fishman sound
The Bottom Line: This is a hard-rocking electric guitar that can mimic the sound of an acoustic. A great choice if you play mostly electric and can have only one guitar on stage.
pvreditor's Full Review: Fender Deluxe Nashville Tele Electric Guitar Rosew...
The Fender Deluxe Nashville Power Tele is an impressive variation of the venerable Telecaster, with features that appeal to a wide range of players and styles. Where it really excels, however, is as a live performance guitar. With its unique blend of pickup flexibility, the Nashville Power Tele is the all-in-one guitar to have on stage.
I've seen various prices for this guitar. When I reviewed it, Fender told me that its list price was $900.
FEATURES
The Mexican-built, Fender Nashville Power Telecaster is a well-made guitar. The alder body sports the traditional Tele shape with a string-through-body and American Standard saddles. Unlike traditional Telecasters, however, it has three electric guitar pickups like a Stratocaster, a Tex-Mex Strat pickup in the center position and Tex-Mex Tele pickups for the neck and bridge.
There is another big difference: the Nashville Power Tele also has a Fishman acoustic-style pickup in the bridge. While the Fishman does not make what I consider to be a realistic acoustic guitar sound, even my folk-music addled brain associates the Fishman sound with acoustic guitars.
A five-position pickup selector switch is used to select and combine the standard electric guitar pickups, just like a Fender Stratocaster. The selection switch gives the following combinations: bridge pickup only, bridge pickup and center pickup, center pickup only, center pickup and neck pickup, and neck pickup only. Unlike regular Telecasters, the Nashville Power Tele cannot combine the bridge and neck pickups.
The Fishman bridge acoustic pickup has its own volume control and, thus, can be combined with other combinations of pickup selections, or used on its own as an amplified "acoustic" guitar. The tone control affects only the regular pickups. The Fishman pickup's output and the normal pickups' outputs can be separately routed to different amps, a stereo amp or two mixer channels by simply plugging in the provided cable.
The review sample's maple neck was topped with a rosewood fretboard. The tuners are the traditional style instead of the Fender/Schallers that are used on the American Standard Telecaster. The guitar was strung with .009 to .042 strings.
The fit and finish on the Nashville Power Tele was very nice and the various metal pieces had more chrome than a 1960 Chevy.
Strangely, this nice guitar arrived in a gig bag. An instrument of this quality deserves a decent hard case, but I think that is not included in the basic price of the guitar.
PLAYING
The Nashville Power Tele is a picker's delight, thanks to the fast neck and small strings that you can bend from here to Main Street. You can select and mix the pickups with enough sonic variety to go anywhere, from that biting bridge pickup sound to the jazzy-sounding neck pickup. The Nashville Power Tele can give the player just about any electric guitar sound. Then, if a song calls for an acoustic guitar, just rotate the pots for the Fishman pickup, and you have a reasonable facsimile of an "acoustic" guitar. Let's call it an "acoustic" guitar with an electric attitude.
I played this guitar at an acoustic club and got some pretty funny looks because of the classic Telecaster appearance. When I started playing, the other pickers in the crowd started zooming in on me and the Fender, giving me that "what the hell is he doing?" squint. They just couldn't figure out how the Fender sounded so much like an acoustic.
A dyed-in-the-wool acoustic guitar player borrowed it for his set. After Mr. "I-Only-Play-Acoustic" finished his selections, he handed the guitar back and said, "That was okay... it's different, but it plays well."
Sitting in the crowd and listening, the Nashville Power Tele was dominated by the well-known Fishman sound. I'm not crazy about that sound but it gets much better with a little external shaping from an equalizer.
WRAP-UP
If you play electric guitar in a working band but also play an occasional acoustic song, the Nashville Power Tele is an ideal instrument if you can have only one guitar on stage. When you get right down to it, it is a Fender Stratocaster hardtail in a Telecaster body, plus it plays "acoustic."
Considering the breadth of sound you can get from this guitar, it's easy to be at home with that range.
Note: A version of this review, which I wrote, is on the Pro Audio Review Web site.
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