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Fender Highway 1 Telecaster Upgrade

 

Review of the Highway 1 Telecaster Upgrade by The Man in the Jar

Features of the Highway 1 Telecaster Upgrade

Tuners - Fender branded mini-tuners are fast an accurate.

Headstock - Traditional street-fighting headstock that remains to be bettered.

Nut - White plastic set-in-slot typw that's tidily cut.

Neck - Beautifully grained maple neck with a chocolate brown skunk stripe down the back. I find the C-shaped Telecaster neck to be an absolutely natural fit for my hands. 

Fretboard - The frets are let directly into the front of the maple neck with no separate glued on fretboard. Given a choice between rosewood and maple, I would always take maple. The absence of a join between fretboard and neck must add some small benefit in increased resonance, in any event it looks superb. Traditional dot markers appear in black.

Frets - Medium-rounded frets are well polished.

Action - The factory set-up is very lower, almost bordering on fret-buzz in places. This is the optimum set up for comfort and speed.

Body - The traditional Telecaster alder slab body makes the Stratocaster look like a fussy girl's guitar. The Tele was designed for the down-to-earth hard work of shovelling rock 'n' roll into the audience. The three-colour-sunburst looks soooo right on this Telecaster that there should be an international law forbidding its use on anything else. 

Bridge - This is a traditional Telecaster bridge plate inasmuch as it holds the bridge pickup and pickup adjustment screws. But the individual saddles are modern block types allowing for full height and intonation adjustment for each string.

Pickups - Here's the upgrade. The two alnico magnet single coils are labelled as "hot".

Controls - Standard Telecaster configuration of three-way selector switch and one volume and one tone. The tone control here removes highs without adding bass. The effect was not hugely marked in my ear, but any improvement on standard tone roll-offs has to be welcomed.

Pickguard - The classic white scratchplate gels perfectly with the sunburst body and maple neck. 

Strap-buttons - Safe, medium sized strap buttons in the usual places.

Output Jack - On the lower edge in the traditional recessed circular dish.

Finish - Very good. The three-colour-sunburst is such an understated classic!

 

Sound of the Fender Highway 1 Telecaster Upgrade

This is one of the rockiest stock Telecasters I've ever played. The bridge pickup has huge authority when overdriven and dropping in the neck adds a great deal more depth. But run the thing through a clean channel and you've still got all the superb sonic qualities of the traditional Telecaster with perhaps a slight loss of the glassiest highs.

 

Overall Impressions of the Fender Highway 1 Upgrade

The huge advantage of this classic little Telecaster is the extra power and bite from the pickups that give you the leeway to venture into heavier rock territory. I have two Telecasters, one Lite Ash Tele with stock pickups for the traditional crystal Tele highs and one Squier Tele upgraded with Kinmans for the rockier stuff. The Highway 1 upgrade reminds me of my own upgraded instrument.
Everyone should have at least two Telecasters and the Highway 1 upgrade is a top candidate to be one of them. 

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