Fender Gold Foil Telecaster

I am often disturbed and disappointed by some makers leaping from bandwagon to bandwagon based on hype. When Fender released their gold foil equipped Stratocaster with three gold foil pickups, I arranged to borrow one for a short period to do a review. It did not go well. A guitar is more than the sum of its parts. Sometimes, it’s spectacular, most times it’s average and some times it is really off-putting. The last is what I found with the Fender Gold Foil Stratocaster and to a lesser extent with the Fender Gold Foil Jazzmaster that I reviewed in March 2023. I didn’t like the feel of the Strat, it also screamed “cheap and poor quality”, and I did not like the sound of the pickups. I concluded that the gold foils were lousy and moved on.

I may have been right about that guitar, but comments from my podcast guest Fraser Moore, suggested that I take another try, but this time with a Fender Gold Foil Telecaster that the store he works at has in stock at the time of this writing.

Fraser and I don’t agree on everything, but we are in alignment more often than not. I picked up the guitar while doing my quick review of the Fender Tonemaster Pro multi-effects system. I really disliked the sound and chose a different guitar. As it turned out, despite a brilliant user interface, the Tonemaster Pro sound is unimpressive to me. Unfortunately the gold foil Telecaster got splashed with that conclusion.

I was recently in the shop (The Arts Music Store) where they kindly allowed me to use my new mobile silent recording rig composed of an iPhone, a Positive Grid RIFF interface with GarageBand and BIAS FX 2 Mobile apps on the iPhone. I also have a pair of flat response BOSE around ear headphones in my kit. After I completed my self-assigned task with a beautiful used 2008 Taylor Jumbo, I asked if I could record the Gold Foil Telecaster.

Gold Foil Pickups - A Short History

The first gold foil pickups appeared in the late nineteen fifties. They were predominantly single coils of relatively low output, although it must be noted right here, that gold foil pickups have never been consistent between makers. There have been single coils and humbuckers, low output and high output and everything in between.

The original designs were based on weaker rubberized ferrite magnets, either bars, or pole piece designs with about the strength of what we encounter today as fridge magnets. There is no gold in gold foils. The screen-like tops are basically a metal screen, spray painted gold. You will also hear of black foils and silver foils, the only differentiator being the colour of the paint used on the screen.

The first guitars with gold foil pickups tended to be relatively inexpensive, coming from brands including Silvertone, Harmony, Kay and Guyatone. Aficionados have been known to hunt for these old guitars that are considered junk by too many people and gut them for their pickups. Magnets do not get better or worse with age, unless they have been mishandled or placed close to a much more powerful magnet.

Gold foils of the old design tend to have a rich harmonic content and are known to be touch sensitive and to work well with good volume and tone controls. They also can deliver superb nuanced response to pick attack and have a very wide dynamic range. There are many makers now offering gold foil pickups such as Jason Lollar and Curtis Novak and in this particular guitar, Fender has their own build.

The Fender Gold Foil Telecaster

This guitar is built in Fender’s Mexico factory and that immediately brings its purchase price into the realm of reasonable. Yes as expected, Fender’s marketing speaks little about the pickups and mostly about the cosmetics. The guitar is available in either White Blonde or Candy Apple Red. The one that I played had the White Blonde finish and it appeals to me personally. The fingerboard is ebony and has medium jumbo frets, but I would call them more medium than jumbo. The fretboard radius is twelve inches. The body is mahogany and the neck is maple. The headstock is painted to match the body. While most photos show the white blonde as opaque, the one that I used had a translucent look and was really beautiful. The neck is a comfortable C shape for those that worry about descriptions over feel.

Beyond the gold foils, the ebony 12 inch radius board and the resonant mahogany body, the guitar is a Mexico built Telecaster. Master volume, master tone, 3 way pickup selector, four bolt maple neck as standard. The tuners are Fender labeled with white buttons. The bridge plate is of the short variety and the saddles are the regular three barrel brass variety. The looks are for cosmetic purposes and while it looks nice, improvements are readily possible and in some cases required.

Fender’s gold foil pickups are mini humbuckers. Thus they are very quiet, but unlike how a full sized humbucker can, they never get swampy. So long as you don’t touch either the volume or tone controls as I learned to my disappointment.

The difference between this guitar and the Stratocaster or Jazzmaster versions is all in the feel. This particular Tele just fits and plays amazingly well. I would say that the example that I played and recorded felt better than the other US built Telecasters that I have played recently with the exception of the American Ultra Telecaster, which is a very different guitar in many ways, including the neck shape and the use of individual saddles. I am aware that some folks denigrate the Mexico factory products. That has not been my experience. I have had more success with Mexico made Fenders than US made ones in terms of personal ownership. However let me be clear that fit and feel do not include the functional aspects of the electronics.

But of course, what really matters is the sound. This guitar with these pickups excels into a “clean” amplifier. As I was recording digitally, I used a virtual stereo rig with both a Vox AC30 Top Boost and a ‘77 Fender Vibrolux. Running them both through a digital reverb and then splitting into Vox and Fender cabinets, its tone is pure bliss. There is a chime not native to regular Telecaster or Stratocaster pickups and while the bridge pickup has good bite, it’s not that nasty nasal bite that you can get with some bridge pickups. This may have to do with them being mini humbuckers or just the natural outcome of a lower output wind. I am fortunate to own a lot of guitars, but this Telecaster does not sound like any of them. For those who wonder, the resistance of the neck pickup was 8.6 and the bridge was 8.8

I understand that some folks like a really fuzzed up gold foil. I am not a fuzz person, unless it is the Effectrode Mercury Fuzz as a generalization. I also ran the Telecaster into a Marshall Plexi amp and cab sim. I like that a lot less myself and would have tried a ‘59 Bassman but I ran out of time.

The gold foils have their own sound, with incredible dynamic range and sensitivity to pick attack and in this guitar are neither muddy or boring as they were in the Stratocaster version so long as you leave the volume and tone pots wide open. While I would make changes to this Telecaster if I owned it, the pickups are, to me, the reason to buy one, and I would not feel compelled to change them. Not so much the remaining electronics.

In a live scenario, that is a guitar into real amps, the sound is still unique, but less pleasant. The BIAS FX 2 Mobile presets had effects in them, as expected and desired. Direct into a tube amp like a ‘65 Fender Blackface Twin or a VOX AC30 C2 took a LOT more work to get a decent sound without pedals. I can directly attribute these challenges to the in guitar electronics.

To be really blunt, both the volume and tone pots are only viable when wide open. This is where they were when I did the recordings in the store. I wanted as little impact as possible from the volume and tone stack and got it. However nice these pickups sound, even with the on guitar controls wide open direct into an amp, there is a substantial need for a really good compressor. They can be quite strident into a clean tube amp and the onboard controls are entirely debilitating meaning that you have to do all the work on the amp. When I applied compression (Origin Effects Cali76 and Origin Effects Cali 76 Stacked Edition tried independently) I could get a really nice tone from the amp. So long as I did not touch the on guitar controls.

The volume control delivers a reasonable taper going from 10 to 8 but going lower all the treble gets chopped and the signal level drops precipitously as to be complete rat shit by the time you get to 5. Lower than that just means muddier and a lot more quiet. The volume control and lack of a treble bleed produces crap and if you buy this guitar and don’t replace it, you had better get used to running the volume wide open. As bad as the volume control is, the tone control is even more catastrophic. There is hardly any audible impact rolling off from 10 to 8, but anything lower turns to outhouse sludge. It is even worse than the volume control given the ease in which it renders the guitar horrible sounding. I really wonder if anyone at Fender actually play tested these electronics. I did not have the approval to pull the control plate off, but if I owned this thing, both pots and whatever rolled dung is being used for capacitors would require replacement immediately. I would replace the switch and the output jack as a matter of course. One collection of crap parts usually implies crap parts all around. I use the volume and tone controls on my guitars all the time. If you never move yours off 10, you will probably not hear the same disgusting audio destruction.

The brass barrel saddles are perfect 1950s Telecaster. There is no hope of good intonation. In my opinion, Fender needs to pull their head out and understand that just because it worked in 1952 it is not optimal in 2023. They figured this out on the American Ultra Telecaster, why must they continue to deliver crap on other guitars. I did some cursory research and could not find a short bridge plate with six independent saddle options as replacement parts. I could however buy compensated barrel saddles, and I would say that this is a must have replacement if being in tune is important to you. Vintage in Fender speak means unevolved and cheap for the purpose of cosmetics, not audio quality.

Audio Samples

All the samples were recorded using my new remote recording rig as noted earlier. The first is just a short clip going from both pickups to neck to bridge. The second is a simple progression using the clean amp layout described above and the third is the overdriven amp layout also described. They sounded better (a lot better) than direct into a clean amp for what that matters to you.

My Conclusions

I wanted to want this guitar. Yes I could order a set of gold foils and install them in an existing guitar, but if I were in the position, the particular instrument that I used just played and sounded terrific acoustically as is. I would switch out the plain barrel saddles to at minimum compensated brass but would consider changing the bridge plate and saddles to individual saddles with individual height and intonation capabilities if such things became available. I would also change the tuners, which feel cheap and gritty. The string tree would be replaced by a Graph Tech tree, and eventually the faux bone nut would be swapped out for either real bone or a Graph Tech nut. However, the controlling electronics have to go directly to the waste bin and everything would be replaced. While the Mexico build is grand, the parts are cheap garbage. Everyone by now knows that I hate the basic fender strings but that’s not important because I restring new guitars upon getting them home.

While these changes would increase the overall cost of the guitar, they are things that I have done before and enjoyed. I would encourage anyone who likes the fit and feel of the so simple Telecaster but who wants chime, shimmer and dare I say some jangle to go play one of these Telecasters. You, as I did, might find a really wonderful playing example and love the sound of these pickups. This was so incredibly different from the gold foil Stratocaster that I remain stunned at the difference in playability and sound. Now if only the remaining electronics were not such utter junk. One of my friends suggested just buying another Squier Classic Vibe Tele and doing the full conversion on that and it would probably end up the same in cost as the Gold Foil Telecaster. I have rebuilt other Squiers, and been very successful, but sometimes you find a guitar that just fits. The specific example that I had is one of those guitars.