New Fender American Original Series to replace AVRI..

P.Walker said:

Ah, my kind of thread. Hopefully I can shed some light on this.

My main squeeze is a 65 reissue strat that I've played long enough to get refretted.

For those in the know, Fender did away with the original 57/62 reissues in 2012. The original series were good enough and accurate enough reissues that really signalled the end of the CBS, but in 2012, they really revamped the whole line, and really got it down good with the hardware, contours and body shapes, not to mention the ridiculously thin finishes (some are actually even too thin, based on my experience of handling original vintage fenders from that era). Perhaps the laminate fingerboard is a little too thick on the 65, but thick lam 1965 vintages do exist so! That and 52 tele dot spacing is more like 53, but I am getting ahead of myself.

The pure vintage strat had 56, 59, 65 models, with 154 made for a special run of 1954 strats that actually have those ridiculous bakelite plastics.
The pure vintage tele had the 52, 58, 64. I like the 58 best personally, as I feel it's an underappreciated era for the tele.

Now, I was initially skeptical as to whether Fender would discontinue the PV line after only 6 years, but I think they are really doing that and that makes perfect sense. Here's why:

The new original vintage series in many ways is not truly accurate as the pure vintages were, but that's good in a way!
It is kind of like the familiar hot rod series in a way, yet too "vintage" to be considered truly hot-rodded.
The new original vintage line is between fender's pure vintage series and a hot rodded version, though more closely leaning towards the former.

First, these new models don't have the 7.25" radius nor the smaller frets (though PV frets are still a hair bigger than what Fender used to put in during the 1950s).
Important? Maybe not, but this is what we are here for. Personally I like big frets, the radius I can get away with on most.

Second, and this is a pet peeve of mine, but these new originals don't have the specific year moniker, which is probably not that important, but to some potential buyers it is, and the 50s/60s designation is kind of a lazy way out. Not that important considering all things.

But am I saying that's a bad thing? No infact, the hardware is still all retooled "pure vintage" as are the pickups: the 50s use PV 59s, as does the 60s have PV 65 (which are great by the way).

What probably happened with the strat was that the 56 is a more iconic model than the early transitional 59, and I assume that's how Fender mgmt saw it as well, with regards to sales as well. So for the 50s model, they went with the 56 pure vintage reissue, made the board flatter, stuck bigger frets (presumably 6105 frets), replaced the 56 pickups with 59 pickups (which are different btw), called them 50s and released them.

Again, the 59 probably felt a little redundant in Fender' view. Consequently you have the 60s strat that is in essence a PV65 strat right down to the later transitional decal, with 65 pickups, but with flatter radius and bigger frets.

The same applies for Teles. The 58 model was probably overlooked in favor of the more iconic 52 (and rightly so) and the 64. What is neat about the 60s tele is that while it is the same 64 tele with the same hardware but different board/fret profile, it comes it double-binding! That is always cool.

One other detail with the new 50s tele is that it's basically a pv52 with flatter board/bigger frets, the finish is back to being more yellow and less opaque (more transparent). Personally, this was seen on the American vintage series pre-2012 and more often on the fullerton spec models, but I think this isn't really representative or historically accurate. The pure vintage models from 2012-2018 have the right shade of NOS butterscotch tele color that I am familiar with from seeing many vintage examples and having owned multiple Fender custom shop examples. Okay, maybe like 97% accurate, but pre 2012 butterscotch shades, and post 2018 shades are not really that accurate if you are anal about this stuff.

As an aside, when Fender did launch the PV series in 2012, they really did well with the hardware like stamped "pat pending" saddles, that more recent Fender CS examples have followed Fender USA's lead and started using some of the parts like the saddles on the CS models.

Also because the new original series are really in essence the same as regular Fender custom shop relics/nos guitars, it'll be interesting to see what the reception might be.

In the bigger scale, it's rather interesting because the trend seems to be that Gibson custom shop goes for historical accuracy while their USA division goes for more creative stuff, while Fender USA goes for historical accuracy and Fender CS likes to mismatch and almost always has something different going on. In a different light, Fender CS is like what you get after you play your PV for a long time...you're gonna get a wrecked finish, perhaps some changed parts, a refret or two along the way, overspray etc.

Also, the radius/fret thing is overblown. If you have owned a truly vintage strat, it'd be stupid to not address the frets/radius when it's time to refret it.

I personally like the look of the 7.25" so I get bigger frets and have the luthier file the radius on the frets themselves. But I don't care either way.

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fakejake said:

Personally, I prefer the vintage radius and smaller frets, but thats because I rarely bend a note but often play 4 note chord voicings.
Also, imo the tinted lacquer on the AVRI looked SO much better than the anemic clear coat on the new ones.
I'm curious how the cases and case candy will look like. Part of why I love the AVRI series is the whole package gives you the illusion of buying a new guitar back in the 50ies or 60ies.
Or a bit like a NOS under the bed find.

I'd be really interested to see some sales stats on the various Fender lines of the past 20 years. AVRI must have been one of their big earners.

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Shakey said:

...99.99999% of the guitar buying public aren't basement dwelling, anorak wearing nerds that lurk on online forums getting hard over a guitar that uses period correct flat head screws and have thousand post threadnoughts about the 0.1mm differences in finish thickness...people that have big guitar collections but can't change strings.....

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fakejake said:

Personally, I prefer the vintage radius and smaller frets, but thats because I rarely bend a note but often play 4 note chord voicings.

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P.Walker said:

In the bigger scale, it's rather interesting because the trend seems to be that Gibson custom shop goes for historical accuracy while their USA division goes for more creative stuff, while Fender USA goes for historical accuracy and Fender CS likes to mismatch and almost always has something different going on.

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RocknRollShakeUp said:

A 9.5" radius is so much more playable for me, so this is good news. I actually prefer even flatter boards, but 9.5" is GTG. I was a Wildwood thin skin kind of dude that are essentially these guitars more or less! Vintage vibe, but 9.5" radius and 6105 frets! I hope these new ones are less expensive then the thin skins!

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P.Walker said:

Absolutely, and I say this as a sucker for period correct stuff. Also 9.5" vs 7.25" while huge in the "eyes" of the frets themselves, they hardly reflect light any less differently under the lights.

Wildwood has them priced right at or below the thin skins it seems. For all intents and purposes it *is* a wildwood thin skin "reissue" haha.

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