Fender Musical Instruments Corporation (FMIC) announces the John Osborne Telecaster® in collaboration with the Grammy®-winning guitarist John Osborne. A highly customized signature model inspired by his personal, road-tested 1968 Telecaster guitar, the John Osborne Telecaster is designed for expressive, dynamic playing; this instrument blends classic Fender craftsmanship with innovative performance features, including the signature B String Bender. Launching as part of Fender’s celebration of the Telecaster’s 75th anniversary, the John Osborne Telecaster honors both the enduring legacy of this iconic guitar and the distinctive artistry of one of the most influential players in modern country music.
“There are a lot of amazing guitars in this world, but none are as versatile as the Telecaster,” said John Osborne. “It just works with every song, works with every genre; I want someone to pick it up and take this instrument that I’ve played for so long, and blaze their own trail with it.”
John Osborne is a Grammy-winning guitarist and songwriter best known as one half of Brothers Osborne, the multi-platinum duo behind numerous Top 10 hits and fan-favorite anthems like ‘Stay a Little Longer ’ and 'It Ain’t My Fault.’ With multiple ACM and CMA Awards to their name, MCA’s Brothers Osborne have helped redefine modern country music with a sound that blends raw authenticity and rock energy. Widely regarded as a “player’s player,” Osborne has earned a reputation for his expressive bends, soaring solos and tone-driven approach that puts guitar craftsmanship at the forefront of today’s country landscape.
“Working with John Osborne was really about honoring the way he plays and finding a way to bring that into a guitar other players could connect with,” said Max Gutnik, Fender’s Chief Product Officer. “We began with his original ’68 Tele and collaborated closely with him to shape a signature model that feels true to who he is as a player. From the B-string bender to the road-worn feel, it’s unmistakably John’s guitar, but it’s built to inspire anyone who wants to explore that sound and make it their own.”
The John Osborne Telecaster centers on its Fender B String Bender, a signature mechanism that raises the B string a full step, unlocking the pedal steel-inspired bends and sweeping lead lines that define Osborne’s sound. As Fender's first-ever in-house designed B-bender, this feature is a standout for players seeking that signature pedal steel-style expression. Built on a balanced alder body with vintage-inspired aesthetics, the guitar delivers professional-grade tone and sustain. Custom-voiced pickups cover everything from shimmering cleans to growling overdrive, making the guitar as versatile in the studio as it is on stage.
Key Features:
Fender B String Bender mechanism – Allows players to achieve pedal steel-style bends and expressive lead lines, a signature element of John Osborne’s playing.
Road Worn® Olympic White finish – Captures the authentic wear and character of a gigging musician’s trusted instrument, combining vintage aesthetics with a broken-in feel.
Custom-voiced John Osborne Telecaster pickups – Designed to deliver shimmering clean tones, growling overdrive, and the tonal versatility John relies on for studio and stage.
’68-Style Maple Neck With Maple Cap Fingerboard – Smooth playability and classic Fender feel, providing comfort and precision for long sets or recording sessions.
3 Compensated Brass Barrel Saddles – Ensures perfect intonation across the strings while retaining signature snap and twang.
Custom Pickguard – Tailored specifically for John Osborne’s signature look and style, completing the aesthetic of a road-tested, performance-ready instrument.
Beyond Brothers Osborne, John Osborne has continued to expand his creative footprint in recent years, emerging as a sought-after producer known for his instinctive musicianship and artist-first approach in the studio. His production credits include acclaimed projects such as the Grammy-nominated album Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville, as well as recent work with rising talents including Grace Bowers and Caylee Hammack, further cementing his reputation as a trusted collaborator across generations of artists. John is currently in the studio with Brothers Osborne working on new music set for release later this year, continuing to evolve the duo’s signature sound while pushing his own musical boundaries even further.
John Osborne Telecaster® (MSRP: $2199.99 USD, £1,849 GBP, €2,199 EUR, $3699 AUD, ¥330,000 JPY) Grammy-winning guitarist and songwriter John Osborne has shaped modern country music with his expressive playing and distinctive tone, earning multiple top 10 hits and accolades from both the Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association. The John Osborne Telecaster® is closely modeled on his personal, road-tested instrument, translating the guitar he relies on night after night into a production-ready signature model. Its Fender B String Bender allows players to achieve the pedal steel-inspired bends and lead lines that define Osborne’s sound, while the Road Worn® Olympic White finish and custom pickguard capture the authentic look and feel of a gigging musician’s trusted instrument. Custom-voiced John Osborne Telecaster pickups, a ’68-style maple neck with maple cap fingerboard, and 3 compensated brass barrel saddles deliver the tone, precision, and playability that Osborne demands, from shimmering cleans to growling overdrive. Every element of the guitar reflects Fender’s commitment to artist-driven design and Osborne’s personal style, offering players a professional-grade instrument built to perform in the studio, on stage, or anywhere inspiration strikes.
In the spring of 2020, I found myself quarantined in Nashville, staring at screens for too many hours, with TikTok feeding me an endless scroll of protests, police confrontations, and cities on edge. Meanwhile, right here in Music City, protesters smashed windows along Lower Broadway and set fires near the state Capitol. It felt surreal, chaotic, and unpredictable. The entire world was wondering: What’s going on?
During that time, I rewatched the documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown. It occurred to me that our current chaos hit exactly half a century after Marvin Gaye captured the same bewilderment in his landmark 1971 single and album. Recorded in the summer of 1970 at Motown’s Hitsville U.S.A. in Detroit, What’s Going On emerged from a man who’d grown weary of the polished pop machine.
Before this, Marvin Gaye was the ideal Motown product: handsome, polite, safe. Hits like “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You),” “Ain’t That Peculiar,” and “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” made him a star. But by 1969, depression had sidelined him. He stopped touring. His brother Frankie returned from Vietnam with haunting stories of war’s toll. Detroit’s streets boiled with police brutality and unrest. Singing only love songs started feeling dishonest.
The spark came on May 15, 1969, when Four Tops member Renaldo “Obie” Benson witnessed police attacking anti-war protesters at Berkeley’s People’s Park on “Bloody Thursday.” Shaken, Benson wondered aloud, “What’s going on here?” Why send kids overseas to die? Why beat them in the streets at home? Back in Detroit, he collaborated with songwriter Al Cleveland on a tune inspired by those questions. Benson pitched it as a love song—about love and understanding—but his bandmates dismissed it as protest. Benson insisted: “I’m not protesting. I want to know what’s going on.”
Motown in the ’60s was a hit factory modeled on Detroit’s auto plants. Berry Gordy ran it with iron discipline: Songwriters cranked out material, producers cut poppy versions, and weekly quality-control meetings decided releases. The goal was to make Black music that white America would embrace—no politics, no anger, no “inside” references. Songs focused on love, heartbreak, dancing—emotional ground that was safe enough to cross racial lines. The Funk Brothers delivered grooves that ruled dance floors with tight time driven with a ubiquitous tambourine, two drummers, and James Jamerson’s funky bass lines. Albums were a collection of singles and filler.
Marvin Gaye thought this song would not fly under the constraints of Gordy, so he booked a late-night session with a core of trusted Funk Brothers—including Jamerson, who, legend has it, was so drunk he had to lay on his back to play, reading charts upside down. Jamerson’s line never really repeats; instead, he weaves chromatic passing tones into a jazz-influenced swing that rarely hits the tonic and never loses the pocket.
“Marvin Gaye’s masterpiece endures because it refuses rage for its own sake.”
The whole vibe of the sessions feels loose, spontaneous, alive. This wasn’t assembly-line Motown; it was personal, socially conscious, adventurous. The song doesn’t shout protest. It asks questions: about war’s human cost, community violence, poverty, ecology. “Mother, mother, there’s too many of you crying / Brother, brother, there’s far too many of you dying.” The refrain—“You know we’ve got to find a way to bring some lovin’ here today”—pleads for compassion without condemnation. Marvin invites reflection, empathy, unity.
When Gaye presented it to Berry Gordy, Gordy called it “the worst thing I ever heard.” It was too political, uncommercial, poorly structured, sonically weird, very un-Motown. Marvin, leveraging his star power, essentially went on strike and refused to record anymore until they released the song. Gordy relented for a single release, expecting it to fail, after which Gaye would fall back in line. Instead, the song soared to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, and No. 1 on the R&B chart. The public connected. Gordy greenlit the full album, shifting Motown toward artist-driven, thematic works. It paved the way for Stevie Wonder’s creative control and proved personal vision could sell.
Now, the question—what’s going on?—feels eerily fresh to me. I’m by nature an optimistic person, and I suspect Marvin Gaye was as well. Otherwise, he would not have jeopardized a wildly successful career to make a statement for change. Marvin Gaye’s masterpiece endures because it refuses rage for its own sake. It calls for love amid chaos, understanding across fractures. “War is not the answer / Only love can conquer hate.” In 1971, it challenged Vietnam and domestic strife. Today, it speaks to endless cycles of conflict, brutality, and disconnection.
Marvin Gaye risked everything to say something true. The result wasn’t just a hit; it was a mirror. Sometimes the most revolutionary act is refusing to look away.
As a single-pickup, hardtail guitar, the Reverend Charger Jr. wears simplicity as a badge of honor. But thanks to excellent execution of practical design updates and a basic player friendliness, it’s not as limited as one might suspect.
Its combination of a single-cutaway body, bolt-on neck, Steelhead P-90-style pickup (designed in-house,) and string-through hardtail bridge brings to mind a cross between a Fender Esquire and a Les Paul Jr. But part of what makes that marriage work is originality that lets the Charger Jr. hint at those two classics while staking out its own territory.
Hot Rod Heart
The solid Korina body (beautifully finished in metallic cherry, with cream binding and a back-sprayed gold pickguard) produces an unplugged tone somewhere between ash and mahogany—warm, but with plenty of snap. The roasted maple neck, topped with a rosewood fingerboard, has a comfortable medium oval profile. It’s a little chunkier than a typical C shape, but far from baseball bat territory.
This review was my first go with roasted maple, and I’m a convert. Smooth to the touch and pleasing to the eye, the wood stood up to very dry New York winter heating that had me refilling my acoustic guitar humidifiers at an alarming rate and finding jagged metal on electrics I’ve had for years. Not the Charger Jr.’s medium-jumbo (.110 x .050) frets, though. They’re fine.
“The Charger Jr.’s Steelhead P-90 delivers purity that’s hard to resist, while offering enough variety to cover roots, punk, and even metal.”
Reverend is great at effectively updating familiar design elements. The bolt-on neck, for instance, attaches with six screws rather than the traditional four—and it is a tight joint. The strings pass through an aluminum ferrule block, up to a Bonite (synthetic bone) nut, and under a cleverly designed 3-string tree, before terminating in Reverend Pin Lock locking tuners. High build quality brings the best out of these intelligent upgrades, making the Charger Jr. a pleasure to play and listen to, with solid tuning stability and consistent tone up, down, and across the neck. The guitar came out of the case with good intonation and low, buzz-free action, too.
At 43 mm (1.69 inches) at the nut and sporting a 12-inch fretboard radius, the 25.5-inch, 22-fret playing surface is a great platform for chords, runs, and bends. Even after deep bends, the guitar stays true and in tune.
Rocks In the Head
While the Jr. has only one pickup, the 3-way switch combines with a very effective treble-bleed volume control and a wide-range tone control to offer an impressive array of tones. The forward switch position (what you would otherwise call the “neck” setting) rolls off treble but preserves more of the Steelhead’s grindy personality than you get by simply turning down the tone knob. At times, it’s almost like a fixed-position wah. The back position offers more cut and spank, and a lot of upper-mid emphasis—reminiscent of a hot Telecaster pickup but with a hint of combined bridge-and-neck jangle. The middle position is my favorite of the three and the most P-90-like. There’s plenty of top-end bite, beefy lows, and a little scoop in the midrange that makes single notes jump and chords fill space.
The Steelhead pickup seems made for my modded Fender Vibro Champ, which can switch between a Bandmaster-style EQ and a raw, tweed Champ-like signal path (no EQ, higher gain). With the Champ’s EQ active, and treble and bass maxed, the Charger’s switching offered three distinct but totally compatible voices. Overdriven, the middle and bridge settings worked best together, and thanks to the treble-bleed volume control, you can mellow the tone out for rhythm without getting lost in a mix. The Champ’s snarly raw mode favored the brighter bridge pickup position alone, with the middle, unadulterated Steelhead sound a close second. Rolling back the Charger Jr.’s volume yields very nice clean tones.
Through an uber-clean SWR bass amp, the switching system still offers impressive variety. The front rhythm position is more effective in this kind of super-clean signal path, and ranges from darkness to twilight depending on the guitar’s tone control position. Where the other two positions scream through the Champ, they pop and chime through the SWR. What’s more, the Reverend’s natural sustain lends these super-clean single notes plenty of presence and body.
In a way, I was most impressed by how the Charger Jr. sounded with my Universal Audio Apollo interface while I was sitting in front of a computer, because the guitar’s low noise floor is remarkable. Noise can make single-coil pickups—and P-90s in particular—a nightmare when running into an interface. But not here. Factor in the guitar’s comfort and tuning stability, and you can imagine why I used the Charger Jr. for composing and recording sessions a lot in recent days.
The Verdict
From the moment it came out of the case, the Charger Jr. felt as comfortable as a broken-in pair of leather gloves. At just less than $1,100, it boasts the materials and build quality of a considerably more expensive instrument. If one pickup seems limiting, the Charger platform is available in other guises with different pickups and different bridges. That said, the Jr.’s Steelhead P-90 delivers purity that’s hard to resist, while offering enough variety to cover roots, punk, and even metal. If you crave simplicity that deviates from Esquire and Les Paul Jr. templates, this Charger is highly recommended.
"Jingle" John Osborne is a certified twangin' telemaster. His main squeeze for nearly the Brothers Osborne decade-plus run has been a '68 Tele he bought for $700 when he first moved to Nashville. It already had the B-bender in the body, but Osborne but enough staink and groovy grease on it to wipe away any of the previous owners' DNA. It's become so crucial to his sound that Fender recognized the companionship and honored the master and his tool with a signature model mirroring its inspiration. Here old friend John Bohlinger grabs a Osborne sig and the pair chat about guitar playing, why Teles are the best for country music, and share a couple jams. Enjoy!
EMG Pickups announces the release of new special edition finishes for each of the Metallica signature sets in celebration of its 50th anniversary. These finish options will only be available during 2026, making each of these sets limited edition collectors’ items that provide the performance EMG users expect.
In collaboration with James Hetfield, the JH “Het” Set is now available in a custom sandblasted stainless-steel cap. This set is known for its cutting attack and open headroom and is perfect for creating a vintage look while providing the articulate response expected from an active EMG pickup set.
Kirk Hammett brings a mystifying new look to his popular KH-BB “Bone Breaker” Set with the all-new spectrum finish. The KH-BB Set is based on the classic 81/60A setup that Kirk used for years, now with a multicolored metal cap that is sure to turn heads in any guitar.
By popular demand, Rob Trujillo’s signature RT “Rip Tide” Set will now be available with gold metal caps. When this set was initially released, it marked the release of the first jazz bass pickup in a metal cap, and now it is available in an impressive gold finish that will make a statement tonally and visually.
Celebrate 50 years of active EMG innovation with one of these limited-edition pickup sets.
