Valley Arts Brent Mason Tele

This guitar is a clone of the tele that Nashville session ace Brent Mason uses. If you are familiar with his playing you know what to expect from this guitar and Valley arts delivers. The Mason tele has an swamp ash body with a maple neck. The pickups are a Duncan vintage lead stack in the bridge, Duncan hot stack in the middle position, and a Gibson mini bucker in the neck position. The hot stack in the middle position is controled by its own volume pot allowing it to be blended with the other pickups, the neck and the bridge have a seperate volume pot and can be selected with a 3 way toggle just like a standard tele. By blending the middle pickup in with the bridge pickup just enough to take some of the ultra high end off you can get the exact tone you have heard on countless Brent Mason chicken pikin solos. The frets are larger than a Fender tele, and the neck radius is flatter that a Fender. The neck is much fatter than a Fender giving the guitar more sustain and a meatier tone. The tuners are locking Spersels.

This is the ultimate tele. All tones are great and noisless. I have been searching for a tele that I really love for some time and this is the one! You could take this one guitar to almost any kind of gig and it would do the trick, but being a tele it is most suited for playing country.

The look of this guitar is very cool in spite of the fact that it has 3 diffrent color pickups and both silver and gold hardware. the neck is fat for a tele but feels great to play and as i said adds some meat to the tone. The neck is finished in a greenish laqure that gives the maple a vintage aged look. The one drawback to laquer is that it can feel sticky and for this reason I have decided to refinish it to suit my personal taste. The body is a flat silver gray which looks cool with the black pickgaurd, the headstock face is finished in matching paint. Overall it is very well constructed with a super solid neck to body joint. I prefer a polyurithane finished neck, but this is a signature guitar and is built to Brent Masons specs not mine.

Rock solid is a good way to describe it.

Called Gibson about the sticky neck and they told me that is how it is supposed to feel. I consulted my guitar repair guy and he agreed with Gibson. The neck laquer was finished very well, but was not what I prefer.

I have owned many guitars as i have been playing for more that 40 years. I have been looking for a tele and have tried all the Fenders, G&L, Suhr, Anderson and Trussart teles in town and i found this Valley Arts guitar to beat them all. This is one of the best guitars I have ever owned, and I have owned Fenders, Gibsons, Tylers, Shurs, Groshs,PRS,Rickenbacker,Guild, you name it.