Fender Select Series, Carved KOA Top Telecaster

The Select Series from Fender, Custom Shop Luxary for a factory price.  

Until now, if you were in search of a real luxary Fender; Telecaster or Stratocaster, you had to visit the Fender Custom Shop. The normal Fenders do come streight out of the factory, and the exclusive ones, as said, come from the Fender Custom Shop. But where to shop if you are into a special Fender, but you don't have the budget for the real expensive ones? Fender gave the answer: the Fender Select Series.


Fender Select Series

The Fender Select Series

The guitars from the Select Series can't be compared with the standard guitars from the factory. Luxary woods, carved tops and flamed maple are rarely seen on Fenders outside the expensive Custom Shop. The Select Series though, gives you all of this at reasonable prices. This special serie is valued in between the very modern "The Luxe Series" and the very vintage "Vintage series", and they offer the best of both series. The Select Series are the best Fender offers from the factory production lines with the focus on the use of the best available materials, superior selected woods, re-designed electronics and a stunning finish. It's supposed to be the top of the factory production models. And the price? Yes, the Fender Select Series are the top of the factory line, and so is the pricing of these guitars, but you sure get a special Stratocaster, Telecaster or Fender bass from the Select Series for your money.

The Fender Select Series are, as Fender says, the "best ones". They're guaranteed to sound good, they have the best woods, and the best pickups, according to an article in the 2012 Fender Magazine. The Fender Select Series instruments are all limited, and won't be around forever, but in the future, new designs, new woods, and new innovations will be developped for the Fender Select Series.
These Fenders can compete with a custom shop guitar from any other guitar builder.

Koa,  special wood for special guitars

It's no wonder that Fender uses, like lot's of guitar builders, Koa wood for one of their exclusive guitars, the Carved Koa Top Telecaster, from the Select Series. Koa comes from Hawai, is in short supply, and is a very expensive, very high quality wood. Koa deeply shines from light to rich golden colors to dark, with strong grain markings. Very often Koa has a wonderful flame or curl which gives every Koa made guitar it's own unique, exclusive character. Koa gives the guitar a well balanced sound, with the warm tones of Rosewood, and the bright tones of mahogany. The colors, flames and curls make Koa one of the most beloved materials when it comes to building luxury, mostly acoustic, expensive guitars. From the Select Series, I put the spotlight on the Carved Koa Top Telecaster, as I'm a huge fan of guitars made of Koa.

Koa Carved Top Telecaster Fender

Koa Carved Top Telecaster Fender

Carved KOA Top Telecaster, a master piece from the Fender Select Series

The body of the Carved Koa Top telecaster is made of Empress, a leightweight wood, originally used for traditional Chinese and Japanese instruments. The body is chambered, like a labyrinth or maze which leaves the weight balanced, but still keeps a great sound. It is a good, leightweight alternative for the common used woods like ash. One of the spectacular features is the bookmatched Koa Top. Slightly carved and very elegant. The Koa top and the Empress body together gives the telecaster an impressive depth of 53 mm.
Surprisingly the Telecaster control-panel on the Koa Top fits wonderful in the top, and is also slightly carved. As an extra, the standard no-load tone knob has a bypass-click if opened completely, to provide maximum hight tones, and makes this Koa Top Telecaster a bit more versatile than the standard Telecaster.

For the Select Series, Fender produced some re-designed electronics. This results for the Carved Koa Top Telecaster in two Fender Select single coil elements. The neck element has a higher resistance than the more standard bridge element, which results in a higher output and  more agressive tones. By doing this, Fender created the so much wanted mix between vintage and  more modern tones.

The carved top, and the use of Koa wood makes this Telecaster look very good. Combined with the Telecaster sound and the modern no-load bypass, the Carved Koa Top Telecaster deserves to be an item in the Select Series.

Koa Carved Top Telecaster Fender body

Koa Carved Top Telecaster Fender head

Fender Select Carved Koa Top Telecaster video

Below is a video of the Fender Select Carved Koa Telecaster. In this video the Koa Telecaster is shown, and the sounds of both pickups are demonstrated. The video is of excellent quality, so the carved Koa top, and the control panel plate which follows the carve of the Koa top of this Select Telecaster, is well presented. Worth watching!