t style

CuNiFe-driven Wide Range pickups and a 7.25" fretboard radius make this the most period-correct Thinline since the original.

Awesome, alive, and individual Wide Range pickup sounds. Great neck. A 7.25" fretboard radius. Light weight. Period-authentic 1 meg pots.

Taper on 1 meg pots not very nuanced. Less-than-plentiful ash supplies could mean odd grain matches on natural-finish guitars.

$2,399

Fender American Vintage II '72 Thinline Telecaster
fender.com

5
4
5
4

In the 50 years since their big, chrome covers first reflected a hot stage light, Fender’s Seth Lover-designed Wide Range humbuckers have gone from maligned to revered. The guitars built around Wide Range pickups are legends in their own right, too. Keith Richards’ Telecaster Custom is synonymous with the Stones dynamic and adventurous late-70s-to-early-80s period. Scores of punk and indie guitarists made the Telecaster Deluxe a fixture of those scenes. And Jonny Greenwood almost singlehandedly elevated the Starcaster from a curiosity to an object of collector lust. The fourth member of the Wide Range-based guitar family, the ’72 Telecaster Thinline, lived a comparatively low-profile life. Yet it is a practical, streamlined, uniquely stylish, and multifaceted instrument with a truly original voice—qualities that are plain to see, feel, and hear in this new American Vintage II incarnation.

Read MoreShow less

See how Clayton Stevens fuses stinging single-coils, subtle atmospherics, and a tour-tested signature drive to generate his post-hardcore clang.

Touche Amore Rig Rundown Photo1

Facing a mandatory shelter-in-place ordinance to limit the spread of COVID-19, PG enacted a hybrid approach to filming and producing Rig Rundowns. This is the 32nd video in that format.

Touché Amoré formed in 2007 and have been a perennial post-hardcore player that’s thrived on taking risk.

2009’s …To The Beat of a Dead Horse and 2011’s Parting the Sea Brightness and Me proved they’re running on pure, high-octane gasoline. Even though both releases feature no songs over 160 seconds, they still had room for shifting dynamics, a screamed-over piano ballad, and cloaked themselves in At-The-Drive-In catchiness. 2013’s Is Survived By adds more air, space, and time (with four songs over three minutes). Lighter moments include “Anyone / Anything” and “Non Fiction” that ultimately intensify the inevitable crash. 2016’s Stage Four saw singer Jeremy Bolm lyrically work through his mother’s lost battle to breast cancer. The anger and despair are on 10, but the antithesis plays off that rage with dreamier melodies and chiming, modulated guitar tones (including a cameo with reverb mistress Julien Baker on “Skyscraper”). And 2020’s Lament rewrites the post-hardcore playbook working with super producer Ross Robinson who helped flourish their sound by incorporating 12-string guitars, both lap steel and pedal steel, and additional keyboard layers. Those types of hues shouldn’t coexist in a backdrop for slam dancing, but it does … really well.

Cofounding guitarist Clayton Stevens virtually welcomed PG’s Perry Bean into his L.A.-based gear lair. In this Rig Rundown, he opens up about how Mono and Godspeed You! Black Emperor informed his single-coil stank, details an unknown Telecaster that’s amalgamation of American models, and explains how beneficial it was to use touring as an extended R&D trip for the band’s pedal collaboration with Electronic Audio Experiments.

Read MoreShow less