Fender Player Plus Tele set up

Описание: Here's another premium Fender MIM product with many of the same problems that we saw recently with a string of premium-priced Fender MIM Meteoras: sloppy factory finishing over the frets, incomplete and sloppy factory fret levelling and poor neck alignment. Apart from those things this is a very nice guitar... but those things all have to be put right first and that does entitle the buyer to wonder why it isn't done in the factory and that work included in the original premium price?
This set up also revealed a surprisingly poor piece of design from Fender: the bridge. This has been designed so that the proud (yes, domed) fixing screws - all 4 of them - are positioned EXACTLY where they're going to get tangled up in the bridge saddles at their correct intonation point. This isn't even rocket science; Fender knows where the saddles should fall and consequently should have positioned the fixing screws elsewhere. As it now stands, the saddles - when correctly intonated - are left clambering all over those screws with the result that they're slightly splayed sideways. While this doesn't make the guitar unplayable, it DOES widen the e-to-e spread of the bridge overall. There was precious little space either side of the E strings to begin with but this saddle issue robs the low E of another 3/4mm available to it.
And I haven't even mentioned the uneven frets that needed more work - despite clearly having been levelled with a radius-block in the factory....
For about £800 (and the Meteoras were about £1000) is all this acceptable? Well... it will be until Fender takes an interest in what they're selling to customers or - more to the point - until customers start walking away with their money still in their hands. In the meantime, I'm increasingly likely to recommend a Chinese-made Squier Classic Vibe for way less than half the price for those looking for great finishing and attention to detail. Ok, you can't get some of the neat design of the Meteora or the functionality of the Plus (with its switchable noiseless pickups) but you can get a richly finished Strat, Tele or Jazzmaster (I think?) with enough change left over for a boutique pickup install of your choice.
I've fixed all the problems on this guitar and ordered a set of flat-headed screws for the bridge (so that Luke can swap them at the next string change).