[GUITAR MUSIC PLAYING]
Hey, everybody.
Sean Halley here, coming to you from Fender Studios.
Today I am very excited to introduce you to the brand
new American Ultra Telecaster.
So the Ultra Series instruments are the highest level
of guitars and bases to come off of the Fender production line.
And it gives Fender a chance to stretch out a little bit,
meaning that these guitars feature
a bunch of modern enhancements that
will delight the discerning guitar player-- whether you
are primarily using it in the studio or live on stage.
So before we get into the guitar proper,
I should probably show you what I'm using to make noise.
So I've got a 68 Custom Deluxe reverb behind me,
and a pile of Fender pedals on the floor, which
I have not experienced before a couple weeks ago
and I have to say they're going to have
to check my pockets on the way out of here
because there's some stuff that is really killer here.
So before I turn any pedals on, though, let's just
hear what the guitar sounds like clean.
[CLEAN GUITAR NOTES]
OK.
So let's move on to the actual guitar.
So we'll start with the neck.
It is definitely one of the things that makes the Ultra
Series guitars really playable.
It's been re-imagined.
It's not a vintage kind of a shape,
it's actually quite modern.
So they're calling it a Modern D,
which means that it's a little bit more shallow here,
but wider slope shoulders.
The actual finger boards on all these guitars
are rolled much more so than they would traditionally
do for a new guitar, so it feels very comfortable
right out of the case to play.
It comes with either a maple or rosewood fretboards.
This is obviously rosewood.
Comes in medium jumbo frets.
And then you also have--
all the instruments have a compound radius.
What that basically means is that down here it's about 10,
so it's still a little bit curved
and it feels very comfortable to play chords,
but up here it's a 14 and it's quite flat.
So when you're doing bends and things like that,
the fingerboard doesn't get in the way.
So it's a really nice mixture and a modern mixture
of comfortable here and very shreddy up here,
if you have the ability to play really great superb chops
music, which I don't.
But anyway, if you do, it'd be great.
So if we flip it over, you can see
that it has this lovely Ultra satin finish on it.
So it's very smooth, completely non-sticky,
so its job is to protect the wood
but it won't feel like there's much there, which is nice.
And it has this great vintage tint to it.
And I sort of had this insane love of skunk stripes,
so I love seeing this.
This is actually nice.
And speaking of things that I love,
all of the Ultra Series instruments
come with locking tuners.
And for me, personally, I put locking tuners on every guitar
that I plan on using in the studio
or live because tuning stability is really important to me,
even if it's a fixed bridge guitar like this.
So I'm very pleased to see that they
put locking tuners on all the instruments in the Ultra
Series.
So moving on to the body, you can tell
that it is a bound Telecaster.
There's nothing quite like a beautiful bound Telecaster.
But one of the things that really moves the Ultra Series
away from a traditional vintage instrument
is this wonderful contour on the back that it has here.
And all the instruments in the family share that contour.
So you have this sloping neck joint,
which sort of seems to bend and blend into the neck,
and it's actually nice because it's not as deep this way.
So it makes it easier to access the upper frets
when you combine it with his contour here.
So as opposed to a vintage sort of joint,
this is way easy to play up high.
[DISTORTED GUITAR NOTES]
Now, on the front, you can see that this is a beautiful Texas
Tea two-tone color that looks amazing depending
on the way the light hits it.
It has a sparkle and flake in it, which is great.
There are multiple finishes available for the guitar,
so they have these kinds of solid finishes with flakes
and they also have transparent finishes.
So there are two different kinds of body woods--
there's alder and ash.
And the finish that you choose also
determines which one of the pick guard options
that are available as well.
So the guitars are put together and pieced together
in such a way that all of these aesthetic choices
work together and create a beautiful looking guitar.
All right.
So let's talk about the actual hardware that
helps you make noise.
So I'm talking, of course, about the pickups and the bridge
and the control stuff.
I think it's probably fairly obvious to people
this is a Telecaster.
It looks like it's got two pickups and a three-way switch
and some couple pots.
But there's some extra mojo going on underneath the surface
that all of the Ultra Series instruments share.
So starting with that, these are the newest generation
of Fender Noiseless pickups.
So they have wonderful single-coil quality,
but they don't have any of the annoying 60-cycle hum
that we all try so hard to get rid of, especially when we're
using distortion pedals and stuff.
There is a three-way switch, but there's
some mojo in the volume pot.
So all of the instruments in the Ultra Series guitars-wise
have an S-1 switch hidden in the volume pot,
which I think is really neat because you don't have
to muddy up the look of the control plate
with a bunch of little mini dips, which is just
to get some more functionality.
So when you push it in, you can see that the switch
is obviously pushed in.
You can see it, but it's pretty much invisible when it's not.
And this basically controls Series in parallel
when you're in the middle.
So I'll show you how that works in a second.
Moving on to the bridge, there's a long-standing tradition
in the guitar community that brass saddles sound
the best on Teles, and that's actually
what they've done here.
So even though these look like they might be stainless steel
or steel, they're actually chrome-plated brass.
So you get the benefit of the sonic immediacy and the sustain
from brass saddles, but it looks nice and matches the rest
of the guitar aesthetically.
So let's hear what it sounds like when I play a riff
and switch between Series and parallel using the S-1 switch.
So neck.
[GUITAR NOTES]
Middle.
[GUITAR NOTES]
Switch.
[GUITAR NOTES]
Bridge.
[GUITAR NOTES]
So the American Ultra Telecaster--
a modern instrument with a bunch of enhancements
that are designed to delight a discerning guitar player,
whether you use it in the studio or on stage.
So if you need more information about this guitar or anything
else that might be in the Ultra line, head on up to Fender.com,
and you can find all that information there.
My name is Sean Halley.
I hope I will see you again soon.
Cheers.
[GUITAR NOTES]
[MUSIC PLAYING]