The Internet Has Thoughts About MusicRadar's Fender 75th Anniversary Telecaster Review.
MusicRadar called it "a thing to behold." The forum called the relic job a factory template.
Two sides. One page.
Johnny argues the piece. Then he argues against himself. Somebody has to check his work. Read both, then call the winner below.
The take is shown below.
Source
“It really is a thing to behold.”
What the internet actually said
“Call me old-fashioned, but I won't own a relicized guitar. It's like buying new jeans with holes in them.”
Seymour Duncan Forum · b.m.
“The necks feel good, but the consistency from guitar to guitar is spotty.”
Seymour Duncan Forum · g.j.
“They do vary so much. Mostly in the favor of them being crap. But every once in a while I pick up a nice one.”
Seymour Duncan Forum · t.
The Suede Read
MusicRadar reviewed the Fender 75th Anniversary Vintera Road Worn 1951 Telecaster and called it "a thing to behold." That is a direct quote. The guitar costs $1,899 and arrives pre-aged, pre-worn, pre-storied — all the mojo, none of the mileage.
The Telecaster is 75 years old. Fender has been selling factory-distressed versions of it for over a decade. The Road Worn program exists for a reason: players want vintage feel without vintage prices. That is a legitimate thing to want. The argument is about what you get for $1,899 when "worn" means a jig, a belt sander, and a press release.
The Seymour Duncan Forum has been running this argument longer than most players have been paying attention. The diagnosis is consistent. The necks feel right some of the time. The relic finish looks like a relic finish applied the same way to every guitar in the batch. And quality control on Road Worn models has always had variance in it — some guitars are great, some are not, and you cannot know which one you have until you hold it.
MusicRadar got a great one, probably. The review reflects that. What the review does not reflect is the version of this guitar you might pull from the middle of a stack at a Guitar Center on a Tuesday.
The press covers the sample. The forum covers the population. We cover both. That is the difference.
Spotted something the press fluffed? info@suedeai.org
The fluffed verdict prices in a philosophy disagreement about relicing, not a factual error. The review measured the guitar it was sent, and the factory-template complaint indicts the category, not the copy.
What false claim did MusicRadar print? Walk the post looking for one. A thing to behold is aesthetic testimony, checkable only by beholding, and plenty of beholders agree. The guitar's price, spec, and factory-aged nature were disclosed, not concealed. The forum's counter-receipt, the relic job is a factory template, a jig and a belt sander and a press release, is not a correction of the review. It is a position in the oldest aesthetic argument in the electric guitar, whether wear must be earned, and this column enlisted the magazine as a casualty in a war the magazine never joined.
If factory relicing is theater, the honest target is the category: every Road Worn, every Murphy Lab, every Custom Shop heavy-relic at five times this price, a market segment this masthead's other pages treat with respectful ambivalence. Convicting one mid-priced review for the existence of the entire practice is selective prosecution, and the selection criterion appears to be that the review's prose was enthusiastic, which is a style citation, not a fluff finding.
The receipts desk has a real job on guitars like this: does the neck feel like the money, do the pickups match the spec sheet's promises, does the aging chip into your forearm. The owner record on Vintera Road Worns is broadly warm on all three, which the post does not dispute. What it disputes is whether anyone should want pre-worn mojo at all, and on that question the column is entitled to its taste and obligated to label it taste. Fluffed was the wrong stamp. The right stamp does not exist yet: reviewed accurately, philosophy sold separately.