Hello guitarists and bassists, or those making a gift decision for the coming holiday season. There are certainly thousands of options available to you and the purpose of this article is to share what I recommend as a great guitar and a great bass. Instruments that will serve both the new player and the established player for many years of joy and success, without causing a breakage of the bank or massive abuse of credit cards. Fortunately, I am here to make things easy.

My Recommended Telecaster

I have been playing and collecting for about fifty years, with literally hundreds of guitars and basses having passed through my hands, through the wall hooks and the studio. I choose the Telecaster because this so simple instrument is so massively versatile and appropriate for any genre of music whether you like the sound of Slipknot, or Julian Lage or Danny Gatton, or Jimmy Page. The Telecaster was the first truly successful solid body electric guitar. It doesn’t pretend to be something it isn’t but can be so many things to so many people. Some would say it is perfect. I don’t say any guitar is perfect, but I will also never say “no a Tele won’t do that” whatever “that” may be.

Fender Musical Instruments Corp has many lines of instruments and the Squier line is designated as their lower cost option. The instruments are made in China to Fender specifications and contrary to disinformation and outright lies, the quality overall is superb. I am going to recommend the Squier Classic Vibe ‘50s Telecaster, because I think it is an incredible instrument and I personally like the neck profile and prefer a maple fingerboard over something else in this price point and deliverable. It’s MY opinion, absolutely, but I do bring decades of real world experience and I do not get paid or receive any compensation from anyone for this channel.

You may have difficulty finding this on the Fender website, because Fender’s website is constantly out of date and was designed by a blind cyclops. It also has lots of broken links and otherwise busted stuff that prevents it from loading with many security aware browsers. Fender sells tons of instruments and clearly don’t care that their website simultaneously sucks and blows.

Squier Classic Vibe ‘50s Telecaster

The current release units have bodies made of pine and necks and fingerboards made of maple. Both are excellent woods for instruments and were used in the first Telecasters built. Fender calls it Vintage, which is complete marketing hokum, so ignore the marketing BS and focus on the facts. This combination of woods has good resonance. The bodies are multiple pieces of pine glued together. This is very common in all guitars, so the words solid body should never be construed to mean a single piece of wood.

It has a 25.5 inch scale length, which means easy to play, easy to find positions and works well for all except those with very small hands and shorter arms. The Telecaster has no gender specificity, males and females can be equally successful. There is no such thing as a girl’s guitar or a boy’s guitar or a koala’s guitar. Anything of that nature can be safely and appropriately ignored.

The neck has a C shape which is coincident that the shape of the hand forms the same shape when holding the neck.

There are 21 frets on a Telecaster neck, and while some call this a limitation, that so called limitation never seemed to hurt Danny Gatton, or Joe Strummer or Bruce Springsteen or the hundreds of artists who are associated first and foremost with the Telecaster. The frets are called tall narrow which any guitar teacher worth her or his salt will tell you is ideal for the starting player, because the idea is to press the string to the fret, not to the fingerboard. This reduces the requirement for grip strength and increases what we call playability. The nut is bone, which is far superior to plastic.

The hardware is nickel plated, which will age over time in a pleasant way and will not flake away like cheap chrome.

There are two pickups with a three way pickup selector for bridge alone, bridge and neck and neck alone. The pickups are “Fender Designed Alnico” and while there is no translation for what that really means, it does say that the magnets are Aluminum Nickel Cobalt, which is a standard magnet in the majority of guitar pickups. Fender does not specify which Alnico variant is used, which often means that they use whatever is available, and that does not negatively impact the sound in any significant way.

There is a single volume control and a single tone control. Most players use the volume control but fewer ever turn down the tone control preferring to use the more flexible tone stack in their amplifier.

The instrument is covered in a polyurethane gloss finish. Poly is tough and resilient and does not become yellowed and brittle the way that lacquer will and while it is thicker than lacquer is not the “tone killer” often described by YouTube influencers who are paid to sell you something else.

Unlike the “vintage” products, the neck alignment can be done without having to take the neck off the guitar. This is what engineers call a customer focused improvement, and they are correct. The easier a guitar is to maintain, the more usable the guitar.

From a colour perspective (I refuse to say colorway because it sounds exactly like marketing bafflegab). the guitar is available in Aged White Blonde (faded white), Butterscotch Blonde (an opaque natural finish), Vintage Blonde (yellow cream) and Sonic Blue (a light blue, like a baby blue). Most shops have the most stock in Butterscotch because that is the colour most found in the hands of famous Tele players, with Aged White as the second most common. The colour is a personal choice and has nothing to do with the sound or playability.

The instrument comes with Fender .009 - .042 strings. This is an excellent all purpose string gauge, easy on the fingertips, providing good tuning stability without the increased neck strain and grip strength required by heavier strings. I am not a fan of Fender branded strings personally, and when it comes time for a string replacement would advocate for Ernie Ball Slinky’s or D’Addario EXLs in the same gauge.

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My Recommended Bass Guitar

Earlier this year I had my friend and professional bassist Manny on the podcast as a guest. While I have been a bass player for many decades, everything that Manny said made enormous sense so I’m deferring to his guidance (that I am in full agreement with) in selecting a bass. I’m going to go with a Yamaha bass. Yamaha has been a musical instrument maker much longer than the so called big names. They make superb products and deliver excellent value at very fair prices. I am going to go with a four string bass because while there are five string and six string basses, the vast majority of musical styles can be covered very well by the simple and easiest to play four string. I own fretless, four string, five string and six string basses. I have larger hands with sausage fingers, not long spider digits like some great musicians. For me while my hand can handle a six string bass, the four string is the fastest and easiest to play by far. I am going to recommend a bass with a fretted neck, because it is easier to play in tune than a fretless bass.

Yamaha BB434

It is sad for North Americans that Japanese companies use long and seemingly convoluted naming conventions, but if you think about it, the naming is really clear. This a 400 series 4 string bass in the BB line.

The body is made from alder and the neck is a five piece composite of maple and mahogany for great resilience and stiffness to handle the string tension of bass strings. The bridge is a solid block rear loading type that will hold up for years without lifting, an issue on some other basses. The body also has an aggressive cutaway on the lower bout to provide easy access to the upper frets. Alder is a nice resonate wood and is quite lightweight.

It has a traditional scale length of 34” making it a standard sized bass. The neck is not too wide, so playable by most any player. The neck has 21 frets which is consistent with classic bass design and has medium frets. The fingerboard is rosewood but if you would prefer a maple fingerboard, Yamaha offers the BB434M. The nut is by Graph Tech, my favourite nut maker.

The pickups are of the split single coil design using Alnico V magnets. Alnico V tends to produce more output and richer highs than other Alnico variants. This provides a level of spark to complement the low end thump of a good bass pickup. The layout is what I would refer to as a PJ style with a split single coil near the neck (as found in the Fender Precision Bass) and a single coil near the bridge (as found in the Fender Jazz Bass). I am a very big fan of this configuration because of the wide tonal palette it can deliver.

There is a volume control for each pickup and a master tone control. This bass does not use active electronics which is my preference as well as the preference of Manny. No batteries to go dead at the worst possible time.

The finish on the instrument is a gloss polyurethane on the body and a satin polyurethane on the back of the neck. The poly is tough and durable. The instrument is available in five colours, Tobacco Brown Sunburst, Teal Blue, Ice Blue, Red Metallic and Black.

The bass comes equipped with D’Addario EXL170 strings in a standard .045 to 0.100 gauge. These are an optimal set of uncoated bass strings and suitable for most any style of music.

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Wrapping It Up

There you go. Two great instruments as gifts for that special person, or if that special person is yourself. You get really terrific instruments at very good price points. The instruments will last for a long time and you could gig them five nights a week for years. There is no need to spend thousands these days, in fact the return on a higher price is less every single year. Why pay thousands more when all you get is a sticker on the headstock?

Thanks as always for reading. Please subscribe and listen to the podcast. Feel free to submit comments or send in questions. I read and respond to all. Cheers for now and until next time, I bid you peace.