In-Depth Review : The Fender Acoustasonic Telecaster

Seems like I am back to this one guitar fairly quickly.  A friend and reader suggested that I didn't give the Acoustasonic Telecaster a truly fair shake in my quick review, which really should have been (and is now) a quick look.Fair enough.  With the support of Archy Hachey, Store Manager at The Arts Music Store, I have obtained an Acoustasonic Telecaster for a couple of days to do a more complete review.  So what did I learn, and what perspectives changed?  Read on friends...I am working on a unit in the grey top finish.  The finish is really a matter of personal choice, as the guitars are identical and even after more time, the top still looks like wallpaper to me.  That said, I am past that concern and want to focus on the sound.Working with the guitar at home is completely different than a very short audition in a busy music store.  The first thing that I really notice in the quiet of my guitar room was that while the Acoustasonic is sometimes purported to be a great guitar without amplification, it still reminds me in tone of one of those travel guitars albeit with wider dynamic range and tonal landscape.  This guitar deserves, and probably should be amplified.  My amplifier here in house is a Fishman Loudbox Performer, an excellent amp sullied by, imo, a dumb name.  Note that the link takes you to the current version, mine is a version older.My acoustic board is fairly simple.  The guitar runs into a BOSS NS-2 noise gate and then into the front of the amp.  I have the NS-2 off for my tests.  In the send/return loop there is a an Ernie Ball volume pedal, a BOSS GE-7 equalizer, and a Fishman AURA Spectrum acoustic preamp which go into a BBE Sonic Maximizer 482i and a TC Electronic M300 for reverb, and chorus or delay.  Note that the M300 is long discontinued, the current offering is the M350.  For the testing, all modifiers were bypassed, except for the use of some compression in the AURA Spectrum for some of the tests, and the AURA Spectrum tuner as required.  The AURA Spectrum has been around for a long time and it's a different story, suffice to say, that my signal had no modification from the AURA Spectrum's body emulation functions.The pickup selector and Mod knob make the Acoustasonic Telecaster really quite versatile once you have the time to sample them all.  Fender's documentation notes five switch positions and two voices for each position.  They number them 1 to 5 as shown in the graphic and the sounds are as follows by position.  The Mod knob allows to set the blending of voices one and two for each switch position.  This provides immense versatility to the player.  Further impetus to actually read the documentation.

1.  This is the all electric position, using the visible single coil pickup.  The first voice is a clean single coil which is quite nice, not as spanky as my solid Telecasters but very very close to an early 70's Telecaster Thinline.  It's also noiseless so no annoying hum.  The second voice is fatter and not so clean.  To be honest, this is where I would probably recommend an AB switcher so you could send the signal to an electric guitar amplifier as I found position 1 in either voice a but grating out of a wide dynamic range acoustic amplifier.  Not awful, but you will need to roll off the treble if you are like me.  That would be on the amp of course because there are no tone controls on the instrument itself.
2. This position combines the electric and acoustic pickups.  The first voice is all acoustic, emulating a Sitka Spruce top on a Mahogany dreadnought body.  The second voice is a fixed amount of of the second voice of position one.  Not really crunchy, just a bit of an edge.  Not my favourite
3. This position is where I kept finding myself returning to.  The Acoustasonic has both a traditional in bridge acoustic pickup and also a body pickup for those who like a percussive style.  The first voice uses the acoustic pickup and is voiced to sound like a Sitka Spruce top over a Brazilian Rosewood dreadnought body.  It's really very good at this.  The second voice is a pre-defined amount of body pickup added in.  I play with the Mod knob to get the sound that I like, and found this to be my favoured choice.
4. This position, Fender calls alternate acoustic.  It uses the acoustic pickup.  The first voice is made to emulate an Engelmann Spruce top on a small Maple body.  It sounds very nice, quite bright, but I don't have an actual guitar of that construction to compare it against.  Think bright parlour style guitar.  The second voice is a Sitka Spruce top on a Mahogany body in the Dreadnought style, the same as voice one in position two.  The real pleasure comes when you use the Mod knob.
5. This position, Fender refers to as Core Acoustic.  I suppose this is what they intend to be the "common" acoustic types.  Voice one is a Sitka Spruce top on a Rosewood bodied dreadnought.  The docs say it has strong bass with a bright treble.  In theory it should be the same as voice one in switch position 3, but I find it different.  A bit less punch in my opinion.  Voice 2 is an Alpine Spruce top over a Rosewood auditorium body.  I like this one, it sounds a bit brighter than its dreadnought cousins and for simple strumming is nicely balanced.  Fender says its good for finger style, but reality is that my finger style talents are limited such that I could to tell one way or the other.

I mentioned earlier that there are no tone controls on the guitar, and I have already heard the Mod knob referred to as a tone control by some sellers.  It does actually impact the tone, but it would be more easily understood if called a Voice Blend, presuming that the player read the docs.  Look I get it, a lot of players are just going to move the switch and spin the knobs until they find a sound that fits.   That's just not my personality.  I read the documentation, then try different switch positions and spin the knobs until I find a sound that fits.I was told in an alternate store that the guitar is ideal for campfire singing.  I don't think the unamplified sound is rich or loud enough for this, and I'm not sure that one would necessarily want to risk an instrument selling for around $2600 CAD to the elements.  For the player who wants to play at home, perhaps when the rest of the house is sleeping, it's actually pretty darn usable.  I tend to practice acoustic at odd hours, and often will put a feedback reduction disk in the sound hole.  The Telecaster Acoustasonic is quieter than that, a boon in my opinion.Some acoustic players will have to come to terms with the neck.  I like a great Telecaster, and this neck feels not dissimilar to the Vintera 70s necks, albeit without any heavy finish.  The finish is very light and is matte.  Being of a certain age, the guitars I desired in my youth were all shiny, and the entire matte or weathered thing I just do not get.  The wood of the Telecaster Acoustasonic is quite pretty and I would prefer the guitar finished in a nice nitro lacquer for the price, albeit with the finish on the neck not heavy or gooey.  The choice of matte or gloss is a personal one, I just prefer glossy finishes.  All my old Gibson, Martin and Taylor acoustics are gloss finishes and I know that producing a nice gloss with nitro costs a bit more, but we are talking about a guitar around twenty six hundred Canadian bucks.To use the electronics, meaning to use the guitar plugged in at all, requires charging the built in battery.  Charging is achieved by connecting a 5 volt micro USB 2 cable that comes with the guitar to a wall adapter (not included) or to a USB port on a charging block or your computer.  A full charge takes between four and five hours and says that it should last about twenty hours of plugged in time.  Fender does say that you can charge while playing, which technically is true.  However, given the fragility of the micro USB connector, and their tendency to get wrecked if a cable gets yanked sideways, I am going to recommend against doing so.The output jack is a recessed monophonic ¼" standard guitar jack.  If you favour right angle plugs on your cables, you may have a challenge with proper contact if your connector is one of the heftier barrelled ones.  The LED at the jack will flash red when you plug in, but goes dark after this and you do not have an indication of a live connection once plugged in.  I did have to switch cables around and ended up with a 90 degree Ernie Ball cable that does connect, but the barrel of the connector does rest against the outer ring of the jack.The guitar is very lightweight, but I find it needs to be on a strap as it tends to be a bit nose heavy.  Certainly if you have back or shoulder issues with a larger, heavier guitar, you will like the fit of the Acoustasonic Telecaster.  It comes from the factory with acoustic strings, as one would expect, but whatever they are, I found them to be uncomfortable.  I don't think that my demo was a bad example, every Acoustasonic Telecaster I have picked up feels the same way.  Fortunately, that's an easy fix, and were I buying this guitar, the factory strings would already have been removed in favour of Ernie Ball Paradigm strings, probably the Phosphor Bronze versions as the guitar is naturally quite bright, and Phosphor Bronze tends to be warmer than an 80/20 mix.You will obviously put on whatever strings that you like best.  I've recently moved to the Paradigms because they do live longer in the presence of my fingers, clean up nicely after each playing session and feel great.  I tend to kill off uncoated acoustic strings fairly quickly and Elixirs and I don't get along consistently.ConstructionThe fretboard wood on my demo is like the images.  It is a very highly figured ebony board, probably Macassar ebony as is suggested by the figuring.  The neck is Mahogany and of the traditional bolt-on variant.  The truss rod is adjustable at the peghead via an included wrench and there are no string trees as the tuning pegs are of the staggered height variant to manage the string break angle across the nut.The body starts out as a block of Mahogany and is then hollowed out via CNC machines.  Then the spruce top is attached.  As the top rides on an inner lip, only two braces are required which in theory should allow for a good amount of movement in the top.  The sound hole is then fitted with what Fender refers to as the Stringed Instrument Resonant System.  To an old audio guy, it looks vaguely like a speaker horn.  Sounds good, whatever they call it.  There are two removable access panels on the back to get access to the electronics.  Other reviewers have noted that the centre one, which resembles the spring cavity cover on a Strat is handy if you drop a pick in the body.The bridge looks like a classic acoustic bridge, with the strings retained by bridge pins.  While I refer to the top finish as wallpaper, the reality is that the tops are printed directly on the open pore spruce tops.  As I mentioned, there is minimal finish applied and it is matte.  Fender has recently announced exotic wood versions of the guitar with bodies made from your choice of Koa, Cocobolo or Ziricote.  Neither Koa or Ziricote are on a CITES limited list, but Cocobolo is as it is part of the larger Dalbergia (rosewood) families.  While all the guitar bodies are finished, those who tend to be hyper-allergenic should spend some time with a Cocobolo guitar before purchasing as Cocobolo is known to be highly allergic to some folks during the finishing process.ElectronicsThe pickup system in the guitar was designed in concert with the folks at Fishman, who definitely know a thing or two about acoustic pickup methodologies.  There are, as alluded to earlier, three pickups.  The obvious Telecaster looking one is the Fender Acoustasonic Noiseless and I would concur that it's pretty darn noiseless such that I never had to kick in the NS-2.  Under the bridge saddle is the Fishman transducer, a proven and very nice sounding acoustic pickup.  The third pickup, which is used as noted in switch position three, is the Fishman designed Acoustasonic Enhancer, which reads the movement of the top.  For those who play with a percussive style, this is really nice and as I mentioned, I preferred switch position three in general.  The volume knob is just that.  The Mod knob provides control over which voice is in use or the blend between voices.  As mentioned, I don't care for the name, but it does the job.  But it's not a tone control.Wrapping It UpAs one would expect of a guitar this expensive, it does come with a case.  Fender does the case a disservice by referring to it as a bag.  Many folks who have never seen the case became very annoyed with what they assumed was just a gig bag.  Myself included.  The case is not a hardshell but is a very nicely fitted case of the semi soft type with excellent protection, with pockets for cables and tools, spare string sets and the like.  There is also a backpack configuration on the back hidden in a pouch.  If you don't use the backpack capability, the whole thing is very light and the case handle is very nicely padded.I have changed my tune to some extent on the Acoustasonic Telecaster.  Getting it into my guitar room, with my own amps has revealed a very flexible and nice sounding instrument.  The neck is a comfortable C shape and is going to be a very easy transition for predominantly electric players.  The pickup system is really very good with a nice tonal palette to choose from.  The controls are simple and the overall sound is really great, even unplugged.  I think it sounds better unplugged than any other guitars of a similar design, and I definitely prefer it to my old Taylor T5 which was a fine instrument, just not for me.  Serious players are going to want an acoustic amp, and if you really want to rock out, consider an AB switcher so you can move between an electric and acoustic amp.  I did try this using a Radial Big Shot ABY (the ones I own are the older black units) to connect to both the Fishman and my Fender Blackface Twin Reverb.  The guitar in the electric amp is not a Tele but still very pleasant.  Even after this mind-changing review opportunity, I still think that the Acoustasonic Telecaster is too expensive.  Bring it under $2000 CAD and sales would increase because of better reach into a marketplace willing to spend premium money for a premium instrument.I had watched a video interview with the great acoustic player Tommy Emmanuel (heck he's just great, period) and tried reorienting my Fishman so instead of the speaker pointing at me, it was pointed at the wall opposite my playing position.  Yikes Batman, what an incredible improvement in overall tonality.  This has nothing to do with this guitar specifically, but it's the first guitar that I tried the process with.  Try it yourself.