The Fazley FTL218YB
So what do you get for your £66 (and that was the price delivered to my door) well truth be told not very much, but what I wanted was a decent neck and a Tele' styled body and it certainly met these expectations. The neck (22 fret) is actually very nice, well fretted, no sharp fret ends, well finished, can be easily adjusted (came almost dead straight so slackened off the truss rod after it had settled for a few days to give it a bit more relief - a slight forward bow) and I really like the headstock shape. Main neck material is Maple with a 'Blackwood' (whatever that is ?) fingerboard. After nearly a week, tuning stability seems fine, so whilst the machine heads are not the nicest feeling they are doing their job, so no complaints there. The body, according to the BAX site spec is Linden (Basswood) it is very thinly painted, this can be seen at the badly finished neck pocket which is quite chipped, also due to the poor inner box packaging mine had a very small chip evident on its edge, showing no real thickness to the paintwork.
The bridge is awful, not the plate, but the saddles as these seem quite badly made and have very uneven string spacing, though I did get the intonation almost spot on - not bad for a three saddle bridge. I always intended to change these for Brass saddles, so no great loss and a very cheap upgrade, these won't have a pre-cut groove so will 'naturally' space the strings based n the bridge plate mounting holes.
Also the neck pickup routed pocked in the body doesn't quite match the hole in the pick guard as the pickup ends up jammed against the edge of the body pocket pushing it to one side, tilting toward the neck. As a players guitar it would be a bit of a failure as the nut is cut too high, so goes out of tune when playing at the headstock end, but this is an easy fix (if you have the skill) and I'll lower the slots shortly.
But the biggest failing is totally as expected - the pickups. The bridge one has a harsh unrelenting brashness (no not the Telecaster 'twang') that is totally fatiguing to listen too. Using the guitars tone control doesn't help at all as it goes from over bright to totally muddy with nothing in between. I suspect a high value capacitor has been used to tame some of the top end, but this has the side effect of limiting the tonal range available! The neck pickup is diametrically opposed to the bridge, in that it starts off warm and muddy so the tone control can't be used at all! Selecting the middle position blending the two pickup is the only way to balance the situation and get something that sounds like a guitar! Of course I could use my amps tone controls, or my graphics pedal, but you should always start from a good position and that's not available here - but of course that is personal opinion you might just like how it sounds.
So would this be a recommended starter guitar, absolutely not based on my example, so why, you might ask didn't I just send it back? Well I wanted a Tele' style guitar with vintage style AlNiCo pickups and the cheapest I could find was about the £300 mark and I didn't want to part with that on a whim. So the Fazley as £66 worth of parts for a project is fine, but it is sold as a guitar and if you expected it to be great (or even good) for the price, then that's a bit delusional...though of course there might be some good ones out there. Me I've got all the parts on order to convert this to my ideal Telecaster, without spending as much as some basic kits cost and having to do far less work to boot. As for the thin body paint, well I think it'll acquire that road worn look quite quickly and naturally ;-)
So that's it for now (10/03/2021) the pickups and replacement bridge saddles are on order, so when these come I'll show some strip down pictures and the process I go through during the upgrades
Quick delivery of parts!
Before I started stripping down the guitar I fitted the Brass bridge saddles to see if these made a noticeable initial difference and indeed they do with slight improvement in sustain and a fuller overall texture to the sound. Things like sound quality are always going to be very personal an of course there is a tendency to meet your own expectations when spending your own money to convince yourself it's made a worthwhile difference! Well I feel these did make a difference for the better, however, I'm not to sure about the true value of the compensation element of the design as I felt I probably had slightly more accurate intonation with the old (uncompensated) bridge pieces. Well I'll save judgement for later when I've added new strings and let everything settle, but I can always flip them over and just use the rounded underside!
For the neck pickup I've gone for an open design with enlarged AlNiCo V pole pieces, this decision was partially arrived at as the physical size of the pickup is smaller without the cover and as stated earlier there is a mismatch between the body pocket and the pickguard hole and this will allow some extra flexibility. Of course I could probably use the cover from the old pickup if I wanted to cover the pole pieces - but I quite like the way it looks.
The Bridge pickup is a straight (physical) like for like replacement, but visually and in terms of overall weight considerably more 'beefy' and although I didn't weigh them the new pickup seem to be over twice the weight of the old one. Certainly when taking out the screws from the old pickup, the pole pieces are far stronger magnetically than the old ones as well, plus there seems to be substantially more material wound on the bobbin than the old one.
The Guitar Exposed
Mounting the new parts to the bridge and pickguard was as straight forward as I hoped it would be with all holes aligning precisely. So now all that there is to do is unsolder the old pickups, decide if I'm going to bother screening the cavities - I have a roll of copper tape to hand. Then solder in the new pickups, but all that will probably have to wait till tomorrow now as I've other things to focus on today (11/03/2021)
Putting it Together
After unsoldering the old pickups, I decided I would indeed screen the cavities as I have had a roll of copper tape for years and hardly ever use it so considered it to be a 'no cost' option. Don't know if it will actually make much difference and have no intention of stripping it back out at a later date to find out! However it wasn't an easy job due to the very poorly routed pockets, which required that before I could start I needed to smooth off the inner walls, then vacuum out the cavities to remove the dust. Anyway, it's done, so the next stage was to solder in the pickup wires.
The standard of the OEM soldering was, in my opinion very heavy handed, yes it was robust and worked, but so untidy. For instance the hot wires for each pickup have to go to two terminals each and instead of threading them through each terminal hole and individually soldering them just a huge blob of solder was flowed across both, with the wire just soldered to this. The cold (earth) wires were combined and again just soldered to the bottom surface of the selector switch with another huge blob of solder. Well, I'm no professional, but it was far neater when I'd finished!
So all tested and now back together, but before I restring, I'll set the neck straight, check all the fret heights and sort any that require levelling. Though given how soft the fret wire seems I'll only do this if there is a significantly high fret. Then it'll be restrung, I'll setup the neck, action and finally, get the nut sorted. But that's enough for today (12/03/2021).
Final Neck Setup Prior to Restringing
Turned out I had a bit more time this afternoon so decided to carry on and finish the upgrade process. While the strings were stripped off, I set the neck straight prior to checking for uneven frets.
Using a fret rocker, whilst not perfect there were only a couple of high frets that I decided to level. This has to be the softest fret material I've ever come across as virtually no effort was require to remove excess an re-crown the frets. Just as well I'm not a pro or player who likes to bend and shred as I suspect these frets won't last that long!
Restrung, tuned & set the action - me I like about 2mm at the 12th for the bottom 'E' and just under 1.75mm for the top 'e' so set these first then use the appropriate Radius Gauge to set the other strings as a starting point. The fretboard here measures a 12 inch radius. Decided to dial in a bit more neck relief so slackened off the truss rod, retuned & set intonation - then lots of string stretching and retuning and will now leaving it to settle overnight.
Not, at this point even thinking about the sound, just that both pickups work and it sounds considerably louder than before. I'll assess the overall sound quality over the next few weeks and see how I feel about the end result.
A final testament to the thinness of the paint finish is that though I thought I was being really careful, when wiping the guitar down to put it in the rack, I noticed it had acquired a small chip on the front of the guitar! The quality of the paint on this thing is really rubbish! (12/03/2021)
Another pointer to the poor quality of the paintwork - well at least I'm hoping it is just the paint that has cracked and not the actual wood of the neck pocket! However it did become evident when I was screening the neck pickup pocket that there was a hole in the wall which passed through into the neck pocket itself. This looks as though to create the passage for the wiring from the neck pickup pocket to the control panel pocket the makers actually drilled from the neck pocket through the neck pickup pocket and onto the control pocket - well, that is the easy low cost way & they do all get covered up don't they, so whose to know....
Also the tone control pot has started cutting out when moved, so that will probably need to be changed - it isn't crackly in use, just looses the signal at some points as it is rotated. Only found this out as with the new pickups, the tone control actually has some use as these have added a vastly improved dynamic range & quality to the way the guitar sounds!
The new bridge pickup has that vintage twang and brightness expected from a Telecaster, but unlike the OEM one it not longer has a shrill edge to it, bright, but full bodied with just a hint of sweetness when played gently toward the neck. However if you dig in hard and powerfully it has a real 'spank' to the sound. As for the neck pickup, no hint lingers of the muddy, indistinct OEM one, here now we have a responsive pickup which can handle everything from jazz to country. Full bodied, warm with just the hint of an edge to the sound, so in the centre position it is a great blend for aggressive rhythm, flip to the bridge for cutting lead, go to the neck for a fully rounded smooth but still cutting sound. All very responsive to were along the string you play and your style. Very please overall with these pickup for only £30(ish). With the nut now sorted (though the top 'e' string was cut too low as supplied and this has curtailed setting a really low action on that side of the neck so it buzzes against the first fret when played open. Again this can be fixed by mixing bicarb with superglue and filling the slot then re-cutting it correctly, though may think about getting a replacement Graphtech Tusq nut at some point, I really don't feel like investing much more into this guitar at the moment. (21/03/2021)
Also the tone control pot has started cutting out when moved, so that will probably need to be changed - it isn't crackly in use, just looses the signal at some points as it is rotated. Only found this out as with the new pickups, the tone control actually has some use as these have added a vastly improved dynamic range & quality to the way the guitar sounds!
The new bridge pickup has that vintage twang and brightness expected from a Telecaster, but unlike the OEM one it not longer has a shrill edge to it, bright, but full bodied with just a hint of sweetness when played gently toward the neck. However if you dig in hard and powerfully it has a real 'spank' to the sound. As for the neck pickup, no hint lingers of the muddy, indistinct OEM one, here now we have a responsive pickup which can handle everything from jazz to country. Full bodied, warm with just the hint of an edge to the sound, so in the centre position it is a great blend for aggressive rhythm, flip to the bridge for cutting lead, go to the neck for a fully rounded smooth but still cutting sound. All very responsive to were along the string you play and your style. Very please overall with these pickup for only £30(ish). With the nut now sorted (though the top 'e' string was cut too low as supplied and this has curtailed setting a really low action on that side of the neck so it buzzes against the first fret when played open. Again this can be fixed by mixing bicarb with superglue and filling the slot then re-cutting it correctly, though may think about getting a replacement Graphtech Tusq nut at some point, I really don't feel like investing much more into this guitar at the moment. (21/03/2021)
