Fender Baja Telecaster

Mine was made in 2006, desert sand, its stock:
Made in mexico.
21 Frets.
4-way switch and s1 push-push button for phase/outofphase.
The pickups, i believe they are made in fender mexico with specs from the custom shop, the bridge pup is similar to the texas special, and the neck pup is a "twisted tele" similar to those used on some fender cs teles.
Ash body and maple neck.
Usual glossy finish
Vintage tele bridge, 3 brass saddles
Vintage split shaft tuners
The neck is a little fat but comfortble, soft-v shape

I play classic rock (elvis, rolling stones, led zeppelin), blues, surf, jazz fusion.
It makes good sounds for all of the avobe
im using it straight to a solid state raven RG20 amp with a 12" speaker reverb and delay
its not very noisy, even with lots of gain its just slightly noisy, ive thought of shielding it, but the noise is nothing i cant deal with, it gets more noise on the series setting, and its less noisy in the series out of phase.
the sounds of this guitar are like this:

Bridge pup: Nice Vintage hot sound, twangy, i would say its well balnced in treble mid and bass, maybe more treble for some, but thats when the tone control comes in, just the bridge position and the controls cover lots of ground.

Bridge and neck parallel: The usual 2 position on standard teles, good for rhytm, almost quacky like a strat.

Neck pup: Clear, bassy, nice definition, i like it for surf, but it can get womantonish too, not like a humbucker but its a good sound anyways.

Bridge and neck series: Very useful for lead, i describe it as a solid sound with some twang, very punchy. some say its similar to a humbucker, but more complex imo

Bridge and neck parallel out of phase: Hollow and dry sounding, very billygibbonish, lots of harmonics, its similar to the sound mark knopfler uses in Money for Nothing.

Bridge and neck series out of phase: similar to the above but more treble, i dont use this as much as the others.

The setup was nice, only thing this guitar really needed when i bought it was a string change, the action was nice, and the pickups height was fine too, but i like adjusting these on all guitars anyway.
Intonation is very good for a 3 saddle design, as long as you use .010 strings i guess, but it may take a while to get it right.
The nut is well cut, could be better but it works fine.
neck relief good
Flaws: When you use the S1 switch, sometimes it makes a "pop" sound.

It seems very solid with the exception of the controls, but i would use it on a gig without backups, the finish seems like its gonna last forever, but it has some scratch and dents already mainly for lack of care.
one of the rubbers that hold the bridge pickup broke when i was adjusting it, but i think it was my mistake, easy and cheap to replace.

never dealt with fender, but they are not famous for having a good customer support.

I been playing for like 2 years now, i have owned this tele for 7 months now, and i only own that and an acoustic.
if this was stolen, i wouldnt buy it again for 1 reason
when i bought this it was on sale for $560 now its $1100 too expensive for me, and i think i can make a better partscaster tele with that money, but if it was $560 again i may buy it again. good bang for the buck if you get it for what i payed for mine.
I love it for what it is, theres better teles out there, only they cost much more money, my favorite features are the neck, pickups and the 4-way switch.
I compared this to other MIM standard and Highway1 teles, this one won because it was less money than the highway1 and just as good as those.
This guitar is great for versatility, but it wont make you sound exactly like other guitars, the series position is humbucker-like and the parallel out of phase is similar to a strat quack, but if you want authenticity just buy a strat and a gibson for those tones.
If you want the original Tele tones, plus 3 original sounds and a fat neck you may like this guitar.
good value even at $1100, Fantastic value for $560

I have a Classic Player Baja Telecaster, which I ordered from Fender in blonde, in 2007. There are 21 frets on a soft V-shaped maple neck. It has a 4-way switch, including series and parallel settings and an S-1 switch for out-of-phase settings. It has a twisted Tele bridge and Broadcaster pickups. The body is made of Ash; I can't find a seam, so I can assume it may be a one piece body. The bridge is three brass barrels, with height adjustments. It has Fender/Ping tuners. I have a gig bag, but I bought a case. The Baja is made in Mexico. It has a neckplate that says 'Custom Shop Designed'.

I like to play Blues, Gospel, Jazz, and Country. This is a versatile guitar that fits all of these categories. I use it thru a couple solid state amps, the most notable are the 3210 Marshall half-stack and/or a Fender Stage lead, played on clean channels, thru a Digitech GNX 3000 multieffects pedal. The series setting (#4)is humbucker sounding; push the S-1 switch and the out-of-phase setting is a dreamy Peter Green lead sound. The #3 setting is the twisted tele bridge, the most jazzy sound. The Parallel setting(2) is very strat-like, even with the S-1 switch engaged. The bridge (setting #1)has a funk-R&B-Country sound, and is becoming a favorite. This is an expressive guitar!

The action from the factory was high, as I would expect, to prevent any string rattles. I had it setup at the guitar shop, where I bought it. I did not have any quality concerns after the setup. I later adjusted the action to my preference. My nut is aligned properly. The finish was flawless, the intonation is great. These pickups are why I bought the guitar. I will not be changing them. The neck is really comfortable, though it looks like a bat handle. The fit of the neck to the body is tight.

I have used this guitar without backups; it's new. It has been a reliable instrument. The polyurethane finish will last for years and I've owned it for 2 years. It will be hard to self-relic this poly coated beast. Eventually, I will get straplocks, but the vintage strap stays are just fine. It looks like a '52 Tele with newer style electronics.

The warranty lasts a year; but I haven't any need for repairs.

I have played guitar for about 40 yrs. I have 2 Stratocasters and 2 Gibsons; this is my first Telecaster. I don't play the other guitars much anymore because I prefer the Baja. The soft V-neck is VERY comfortable; it is the only V-neck Fender makes. Please note I can live with the sounds the Baja mimics, it is not entirely the same as a strat or gibson sounds. Frets on the neck are smooth. After comparing the guitars to other Teles, the price and versatility won over the other guitars. It weighs 8.8 lbs and sounds like a dream. I would buy another of these if it weren't for the recent Fender price increase. I wish it would come with a leopard pickguard.

Same as all the others. Blonde.

I got this guitar second hand, to replace a much more impressive JJ Jewel which I, ahem, managed to snap. Consequently I liked the sound of this guitar, but it didn't excite me in the same way. It was Tele like, which is great as I play mostly soul type stuff, but on-stage I wasn't getting that hot, driving the pre-amp kind of feeling, it was a bit of a lightweight tonally. So I replaced the pick-ups with some Bare Knuckles Blackguard Stagger jobs and boy has it come alive! You can spank it stroke it and it will respond. Sounds very Black Crowes as well through a Marshall instead of my normal Fender Hot Rod Deluxe. Got rid of the rubbish 4 way switch as well, why have two poor sounds when you can have one good one?

The kid who had this guitar before me had tried to do his own Relic job on it, attacking the body with a screwdriver in places and burning off the serial number included. So a bit hard to say about the finish but after the debacle with my last guitar this room needs to be robust as it is left in a classroom all day with my pupils. It's taking the pain so far so it must be pretty well made! Intonation is tricky as ever with this design, considering getting a six saddle bridge.

Like I said going great so far in tough circumstances.

on one gig I managed to lose the top of the pickup selector. Finishing one song I managed to skewer my thumb on the top of the shaft and spent the rest of the set bleeding all over the guitar, my bass player and the drummer! Trying to get a replacement Fender's website defers all enquiries to the local Fender dealer. Can I get them to sort this out? Can I buggery!

Basically this a strong, giggable and likable guitar but it needs the better pickups to bring it to life. Don't think a real player would be fooled by it's good looks and sound into thinking it was a custom shop job but I'm happy enough with it now.

A short follow-up. Now my blonde baja sounds a tad better, or is it just in my imagination (it sounds airier, bigger).
The frets'ends are scratching my left hand now, so I say the wood Fender used to make the neck from was not very dry, am a bit deceived here since this phenomenon normally occurs in a couple of years more.
I had microphonic issues with the kinman broadcaster set I fitted in, so I went back to the stock pups BUT with a down-to-earth simple wiring: shielded wires, a 3 way shielded toggle switch ?? la Gibson, and volume pot only (of course I made another plate accordingly) and here are the good news...
Compared to stock the noise is almost gone, and the guitar sounds a deal more direct. At the rehearsal room I have no hum issues at all, and I usually play a bassman head into a randall 412 cab (amp set clean borderline, with my favourite dirt box for distortions).
Those pickups are perfect I think, very solid, you know where you are with them.

I don't gig with this baja, because outside there the electrosmog has no pity for single coils.
Best thing to do would be to buy another one and fit it with noiseless pups, just to gig with, and leave the home-only one with its proper pups. At the price it sure ain't no bad idea!

The S1 is great, I'm not sure how much I'll actually use it but you can get some beautiful tones out of it.

First off I am a total gear snob. I play this through my Orange AD15 combo. I generally don't like anything but higher quality American made Fenders. This guitar, however, sounds a lot better than most MIA Fenders.

The only problem I have with the tone is that the bridge pickup is EXTREMELY, ear piercing, bright and trebley. I've heard it with the Seymour Duncan little '59 single-coil-sized humbucker and that completely fixed the problem. It still sounds like a Telecaster but less shrill sounding with more bass and mids.

I plan on making this change to mine soon.

Plays great, feels great. I could play it all day.

I don't know about the quality of the factory setup, but finding a local luthier to set it up with the right string gauge is always worth it.

I don't know yet.

With a little bit of tweaking (and even without it) this is a great Tele. Completely worth it.

This is a follow up review.

As I thought the S-1 switch became an issue. After the honeymoon I started loosing a desire to play it. It just didn't seem to have that mojo anymore. I would dig it out, and then get tired of it after a few days. Then during a gig last fall it started cutting in and out. Not good. I tried cleaning the volume / S-1 pot with some contact cleaner. It worked again but no mojo. Then more cutting in and out. One day while at Island Music I asked if they could just replace the V pot and get rid of the S-1 switching altogether. I never used it anyway. Jeez what a difference. It has that killer Tele mojo again, maybe more than it ever had. I wish the guitar had never had S-1 switching. That obviously is just my personal preference.

Tele tough but cheezy electronics. Come on Fender. If you are going to incorporate another of your electrical golly-gee-whiz gimmicks, make it reliable, please. It cost me another $50, now I can trust it.

Yea, right.......Keep on saying that.

Standard Baja Tele, in Desert Sand. 9 1/2" neck radius, S1 switching etc etc. I've had it 5 months.

A friend bought one of these and I was amazed. He tried two, and bought the second one. I tried 13, and bought the 13th (lucky!). These Bajas are very variable in all respects. I finally sussed that generally light was good, heavy was bad. Mine weighs 6.75 lbs and rings like a bell. This gave it quite a 'toppy' sound but very musical and with lots of sustain. I already had an Eric Johnson stratocaster which is a hard act to follow tone-wise, and the Baja doesn't have the EJ's sonic complexity but it does have the same acoustic volume and richness. Maybe that's down to ash versus alder or something, but at a fraction of the price the Baja is amazing value. Whats more, I prefer playing the Baja to the EJ. In short, it pays big time to try as many Baja's as possible because sooner or later 'it' will arrive, and when 'it' does you won't want to stop playing it.

Generally things were OK except for two things in particular. The fretboard had sharp edges that cut into my thumb (I do a wrap-around thumb on the low E), and the nut was not cut deep enough for a couple of the strings. I had a good luthier 'roll' the neck edges and re-cut the nut, and level and polish the frets, and voila! I then adjusted both pick-up heights for the sweet-spots and the right mix with them together. These are great pickups. I have since, however, (brace yourself) put a Kent Armstrong PAF humbucker in the neck position and use the S1 switch for single/humbucker selection, and now its even better.

These Teles are, as we all know, one of the three things remaining when the world ends (the other two being cockroaches and Keith Richards).

Haven't tried, or needed to.

Have been playing 41 years etc etc. I play it through 80's valve and tranny Marshall amps and a Fender Tweed Blues Junior. It sounds good through just about anything, but strangely excellent through my old Marshall 5210 solid state amp. Play also an EJ strat, a Gibson ES335, Levinson Blade RML, Signature japanese Les Paul copy, Aria Pro 2 Herb Ellis, Ibanez AF125 and a Kramer Focus 3000. If the Baja went west I'd look for an even nicer tele. There's nothing quite like a Tele, and I'd like to find one which would make most if not all my other guitars redundant. I'm sure there is one..

A 2008 model in Butterscotch blong with an ash body and maple neck. The Pickups are custom shop broadcaster in the bridge and the custom shop twisted tele in the neck. included is the stock 4 way and the out of phase switch via a push on the vol pot. the neck is nice and fat but by conicdence my guitar is really light and resonant. you knock on the body and you get a kalimba type guuung guuung sound.

I am a professional guitarist/arranger who works in his own studio. i use my guitars to record extensively and as such they have to record well. the Baja Tele is a dream to play. It sounds good for every type of music. It outperforms all my other teles( a 51 Custom Shop Nocaster and a genuine stock 69 Tele). I use it in my working rack with a `64 Strat, a 1970 Les Paul Standard and my much cherished 2002 Model Ibanez John Scofield. I tell you what, the other guitars have been sitting around quite a lot, because by sheer luck this Baja Tele is so magically sounding, responsive, sustain rich and dynamic, that i don??t even feel like playing the other guitars. The pickups are standard singlecoils but behave really well in front of the screen and preamps.

The Guitar was pretty well set up. To make it exceptional i had it set up by luthier extraordinaire Thomas Keller in munich, who ironed some minor flaws. The biggest one being the sharp ends of the tele bridge which Thomas completely dissembled and smoothened out. Also the neck angle was adjusted so that i can pull the b string up a fourth without the guitar choking out. On the contrary, the bent note seemed to gain in ampitude. I use the guitar with, as far as i am concerned, the best strings in the world, Thomastik Infeld Power Brights Regular gauge 010 - 044. They further enhance the sonic integrity of the instrument. Thomas Keller also adjusted the instrument, making the Baja the FIRST TELE IN MY LIFE that intonates well. Ad Imo Pectore Bravo!

Sturdy, reliable guitar. I use it for gigs with my funk band, playing intense rhythm guitar for 3 hours and the guitar keeps up and stays where it should be. The utmost in reliability. I NEVER take back ups with me and I NEVER EVER gig with unreliable guitars!

Been playing professionally since 1985 and own about 25 guitars. The Tele Baja is definitely the Top instrument of my collection. It does exactly what an electric guitar should do and inspires me to play. Let me warn you though, all the other Bajas I tried afterwards, even in the same store i bought mine seemed to be less inspiring. So, definitely try em out and i recommend picking the guitar up and gently knocking on the body. If you hear a deep "GUUNNNNGG"you have found a special one like mine. If it were stolen i could not replace it since the next three i tried, were your usual lame new guitar.

I love this guitar - straightforward Tele sound - But also has the capability of 4 way switching. Fender does sell a "Custom Classic Telecaster" with same pickups, and the same 4 way switching as the Baja, but for about three times as much $$$$$$ You can't buy a better "Player" Tele than the Baja, especially for the money.

Sounds Great! No more to say!

Action, fit and finish were as good as most American made Teles - EXCEPT for the nut positioning (see the comment below from another reviewer who had the same problem). The slots in the nut on mine were also cut off-center, so my high E string would slip off the neck occasionally while playing. What I did was take the strings off, pull the nut out, and then moved it about 1/64th of an inch, and glued it back in the nut slot, re-centering the nut. It was an easy fix. Now it plays perfectly.

With the solid slab body and meaty neck, you could use this thing as a weapon.

Fender has always been great to deal with. The nut problem was such an easy fix that I did it myself and didn't bother to seek warranty work from Fender.

Been playing acoustic, electric and slide blues on dobros and Nationals for 40 years. Yikes! I must be getting old?

I've got the blonde, sounds fresher and opener than the desert sand I Ab'ed it with.
Most wonderful neck ever, no effort after even hours. Good idea to have the 9,5 radius/jumbo frets, solid tone and sustain. Even without a pick, only fingers (a 50s MIM tele did vanish with fingerplaying).
Most stupid wiring ever seen, no shielding of any sort nor reverse wound/polarity neck pup which could have helped in the noisecaster department. Of course the serial switching option doubles the already tremendous amount of buzz... Hats off, F...er
Good hardware I think, apart of noise issues it's as perfect a tele should be, and well crafted. Five points off for the shielding-neck pup, bam!

Ok, without considering the noise, you have interesting sounds in there.
The bridge pup is soft, perfectly usable alone in a clean setting.
The neck pup has character, and when phase-inverted sounds better to my ears than standard, alone it is (normally shouldn't do any difference but theory and facts doesn't always match...).
In serial mode it thickens, good for leads but too much noise invalids the whole story sorry.
For me the ideal is in 1 the neck pup alone but reversed, in 2 the normal neck and bridge in parallel, in 3 the bridge pup alone and in 4 the two pups in series. Without noise.
Since I haven't heard any F...er product without noise yet, I opted for a set of Kinman broadcaster pups.
Now that sounds as it should be, go for it. No noise, a spicy bridge pup, a jazzy defined neck pup, and an in-between sound so versatile I often leave it there. And the louder you play the better it gets!

Intonation was poor, but it's a trick anyways so better learn by yourself how to set it.
All the rest was more than okay, but my dealer ain't one to be fooled...

I can see this thing last forever, the bassman among guitars...

BIG BIG LAUGH HERE!!! F...ER as I name them!

I would have liked a no pup option and 300 quids less pricetag.
There is a big tonal difference between the desert sand and the blonde, the latter has better snap and jingle, great to play clean country or light distortion. The desert sand is rounder,darker, jazz, and great to play loud, better focused.
This is, if you stand the noise.
I can't, never could, but in 2007 this shouldn't be an issue anymore.
A tip: my line 6 crunchtone pedal has a built-in noisegate that works very well with the baja (no tone loss, and you can also use it as a booster, without noise, to push your light overdriven amp into lead area).
Thanks for reading, folks, and think about it: in our electro smog modern world, single coils just can't be used in any serious application, even a noiseless tele set from F...er is better than noise. I've seen performances ruined by noise (concert place near a train line and so on...), and I wouldn't ever be in this situation myself uh...