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- Hey everybody, Carl Verheyen here
to demonstrate the Brent Mason signature Telecaster
for the Fender Stories Collection.
And this is a real honor for me
because Brent and I are good friends.
The wild thing is that the day Fender called me to do this
was the day I arrived home
at Los Angeles International Airport
from three days down in Nashville
working with Brent on a country record
that he was playing on.
I love playing country music
and I love listening to killer players like Brent Mason.
And I've always noticed that he's playing this guitar.
This wasn't the first time we've worked together,
we worked together about two years ago.
And he might bring five or six guitars
to the recording session,
but this is the one he plays the whole time.
And I've always wondered, what's going on with that thing?
And it took me a couple of questions
to try to get out of him.
You know, "What do you got cooking here?"
But the reality is I didn't really figure it all out
until I got to spend three or four days with one.
So I'm really impressed by this guitar
and I think I have to have one.
Besides being a good friend
and one of the most inspiring guitar players
to sit next to in the studio,
Brent is one of the most prolific session guitarists
of all time featured on well over a thousand albums,
including hits by George Jones, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton,
Blake Shelton, Carrie Underwood and many, many more.
He's won a Grammy,
he's earned 12 guitarist of the year awards
from the Academy of Country Music,
and he was named one of the top 10 session guitarists
of all time by "Guitar World" magazine.
So let's hear some more from this instrument.
I'll focus on some of the clean tones
and go through all the positions.
It's time we figure out what his secret is.
A few years back, I was doing some concerts
and masterclasses in the Pittsburgh area,
and Seymour Duncan happened to be there.
He gave me some really great advice.
He said, "Spend a week on a Telecaster
"and you'll be a much better guitar player.
"Because of such simple machines,
"you've got to get all the dynamics and tones
"and shadings out of your hands."
So I took that advice
and I actually own a lot of Teles. (chuckles)
It's a great instrument,
but this is anything but a simple machine.
This is a Brent's concept.
Here is a real ingenious combination of tones and pickups
and switches and things like that.
So let me show you what he's got cooking here.
He's got a mini home bucking pickup in the neck.
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And it's just fat and warm and pretty glorious sounding.
Now, when I go to this middle position here,
I get the humbucker, the mini humbucking pickup,
and I get this back Seymour Duncan, you know,
hot country-sounding pickup.
And it gives me a real nice,
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I like to call that a Gretsch type of a sound.
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And that's a really great rhythm guitar sound
that I end up using all the time,
that Gretschy type tone, you know.
It's almost Beatles-like sometimes.
Then you go back here and you have the real country type,
you know, for the country--
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That pickup is just, that's pure Brent Mason right there,
I've heard that on a lot of different records
over the years.
And it distorts really great.
It breaks up great if you want like distorted rhythm.
So that's those three.
Now, if I go to push this button in,
now I'm gonna get a whole different set of tones.
What happens is this thing becomes super versatile,
it becomes more like a Strat.
So in the back position,
I get this middle pickup put in there,
I call this a color pickup, 'cause you can't go to it ever,
but by pushing this in, it combines it.
So now what I have here is a very Strat-like tone.
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And that's these two pickups together,
which give you that typical Strat sound, right?
When I go to here, I actually get all three pickups.
That's a very interesting tone, all three pickups.
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I just like it, it's just a warm, fat sound,
but it's got a nice batch of highs along with it too.
When I go here to this forward position on the three-way,
then I get the mini humbucking pickup and the middle pickup.
And what I've forgotten to mention to you,
that sounds like this, by the way.
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What I forgot to mention is
this middle control here,
this is a volume control, just for the middle pickup.
So for instance, if I'm on the back pickup
and I turn this all the way down,
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I'm just getting the back pickup,
but I can soften it a little bit
by adding some of this pickup.
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Until it's all the way up.
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And it goes back to that Strat sound again.
So this combination of, I guess it's six different sounds,
is a lot more
than a regular traditional Telecaster will give you.
Tele gives you one to three sounds.
This thing gives you six.
And I can see why
every time I've ever played with Brent Mason,
he's brought this guitar and this guitar only. (laughs)
Or a handful of guitars and didn't play
any of the other ones, it's this one that's his baby.
Very versatile, perfect for the studio,
and there's a couple more features
that you got to hear about too.
It's got an ash body with a primer gray finish.
Another thing I really like
about this guitar is the late 60s-feeling
C-shaped maple neck.
It's got a seven and a quarter inch radius,
which makes bending real easy on it.
And it's got Sperzel locking tuners, which are wonderful.
You stick the string through the hole,
crank this knob in the back
and then just tune it right to pitch.
You don't have to worry about
how many wines you're doing or anything.
But the hippiest thing about this guitar
and the highlight of this guitar is the Glaser B-Bender,
which I will now show you what that's all about.
Many years ago, the first country rock record of all time,
called "Sweethearts of the Rodeo" came out, by the Byrds,
I think it was 1968.
And it was a real nice record,
big departure from the 12-string sound of the Byrds.
It was much more of a country type record.
And I was working in the studio, probably in the early 80s,
with a fantastic LA pedal steel player named JD Manis.
And I walked up to him on the session, I said,
"JD, I sure love what you played
"on "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere,"
"that great opening track.
"Your solos were so great on that."
And he goes, "That wasn't me, man.
"That was Clarence White on guitar."
And I go, "It was guitar?
"Oh my God."
So I went home and tried to learn all that stuff.
I'll just give you a little bit of what I learned, okay?
I'm gonna play a loop here, G,
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to A minor,
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to C,
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to G.
And it sounds like this.
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And I will play what I figured out.
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So that's what I figured out.
Years later, I was working
with a LA producer named Gary Usher,
he was calling me to do various sessions.
And he was a pretty famous producer.
He wrote "In My Room" with Brian Wilson, Beach Boys hit,
and he had produced "Sweethearts of the Rodeo,"
that Byrd's album.
And I asked him, I said,
"How did Clarence sound so great?
"How did he sound so much like a pedal steel player?"
And he said, "The B-bender."
I had no idea what a B-bender was, they weren't very common,
and actually Clarence White had the first ever B-bender
made by a Gene Parsons who was a drummer
that later joined the Byrds.
Anyway, lot of history there,
but the reality is the B-bender is a method
to where you can sharpen the B-string,
a whole step by a little lever here in the back.
And what I can show you is instead of doing
that little intro that I just did with my own bends,
I can use the B-bender
and it will sound a hundred times more like a pedal steel.
You're ready?
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Before we go,
I realize I've been playing these pickups clean
this whole time.
So I'd like to show you what they sound like
with a little distortion on them.
They're really hot pickups.
This is the humbucking neck pickup.
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If I go to the back pickup, I get that nasty--
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It's been an honor and a lot of fun
to demonstrate the Fender Stories Collection
Brent Mason Telecaster.
He's a good friend of mine,
and I hope he sells a lot of these. (laughs)
If you have any other questions,
things I didn't cover about the guitar,
just go to fender.com.
And stay tuned for more videos on this channel.
See you next time.
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