At the 2018 Winter NAMM show, Fender Musical Instruments announced a range of limited edition guitars called the Parallel Universe Collection. Consisting of eleven instruments (ten guitars and a bass), the Parallel Universe electrics will be released in very limited quantities on the first day of each month from April through December 2018. All the guitars will be built at Fender's USA Corona plant. Pictured is the second guitar in the series, the Elite Telecaster HSS guitar.
It has a contoured ash body and a custom 9.5-14-inch compound "C" to "D" profile neck becomes slightly thicker as you play up the fret board. The Guitar features a direct-mounted Fender ShawBucker pickup--an uncovered hum bucker in the bridge position. Two Pure Vintage '64 gray-bottom single-coil pickups are in the middle and neck positions. These single-coils are highly accurate reproductions of pre-CBS era pickups--said to be the best Fender has ever made.
The guitar features a five-position Strat-style pickup selector with a switch conveniently located on top of the tone control. Called the S1 switch, it blends in the neck pickup into any other pickup combination. The pickup combinations on this guitar create a wide variety of highly useable Stratocaster and Telecaster tones.
The body color is aged cherry burst and both it and maple neck are finished in a gloss nitrocellulose lacquer. The neck features deluxe locking cast/sealed tuners and the guitar comes with a high-impact plastic hard shell case.
The Fender Parallel Universe Elite Telecaster HSS guitar sells for $1,999 MSRP.
fender.com/articles/gear/closeup-check-out-fenders-new-parallel-universe-collection
Barry Rudolph is a recording engineer/mixer who has worked on over 30 gold and platinum records. He has recorded and/or mixed Lynyrd Skynyrd, Hall & Oates, Pat Benatar, Rod Stewart, the Corrs and more. Barry has his own futuristic music mixing facility and loves teaching audio engineering at Musician’s Institute, Hollywood, CA. He is a lifetime Grammy-voting member of NARAS and a contributing editor for Mix Magazine. barryrudolph.com
