• Vintage Tones and Excellent Quality Build

  
  As reviewed by Michael Reynolds on 1/20/2012

  First of all... Don't get too bogged down by the fact that this is a Joe Trohman Signature guitar. By Trohman's admission, he puts high output Dimarzio's in his own version of this guitar to get the modern sounds of his bands. The pickups on this guitar deliver a more vintage humbucker tone. This is the reason that I purchased it. The Build Quality I can't say enough about the recent Squier Classic Vibe's and Signature Series guitars that I have tried. The quality really looks and feels top notch. The neck pocket is very tight around the neck. Nothing 'feels' cheap on this guitar. The tuners stay in tune very well. The action and set up of this guitar was as good out of the box as any guitar I have ever purchased new. I can set the strings very low and not get even a hint of buzz. By the way... It's gorgeous too. Beautiful sunburst without a visible flaw. The Neck This is a flatter neck and is a bit wider at the nut than the Classic Vibe Series. It is a shallow C shape that is extremely comfortable for me. The back of the neck feels like a satin finish, not a high gloss poly finish, which is also a preference of mine. The frets are called jumbo and are just a hair smaller than the jumbo frets on my American Special Strat. There were no exposed fret edges at all. This might be the most perfect neck that I have ever bought. I also love the bigger 70's style strat headstock on this guitar. It adds just a bit of heft over a traditional tele neck which helps me leverage the weight for vibrato. (again, a personal preference for looks and heft.) The Sound The HSH is certainly not traditional for a Tele, but make no mistake, you can get some great vintage tones with these pickups. The bridge humbucker is a PAF style sound to it, kind of like the 'wide range' series that Fender was putting on some tele's a few years ago. It gives a really spanky sound without losing your bottom end. The neck is certainly smoother sounding, but it breaks up well to give a very full rhythm tone. The in-between settings on the 5 way switch get some really cool quacky type strat tones. This guitar is very versatile, you can get some loose country pickin tones on it, as well as some great 70's classic rock type of tones. Even some texas blues tones sound great. I personally wouldn't use this guitar for metal, but rock, classic rock, blues, and country really suit this set up. I've had this guitar for 2 weeks, and I can't put it down. The feel and tone are really special for the price that you are paying. heck, for any price. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for versatile tones and wouldn't even take a second to tell them that it has anything to do with Joe Trohman. If it were stolen, I'd order another immediately. Simply a stunning steal at the price, and a guitar that I would not hesitate to play live or at home anytime and anywhere.

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