Fender has rolled out the Brian Fallon ’59 Telecaster Custom, a super high-end Custom Shop replica of the electric guitar that was Fallon's favourite Tele, his go-to guitar during the early days of The Gaslight Anthem.
This limited edition signature guitar arrives in Black with the Corona Custom Shop’s meticulous Journeyman Relic finish.
It has the Righteous Sound “Fourth Man” pickups, a humbucker at the neck, a single-coil at the bridge, as per the Telecaster Custom’s now classic configuration – and it’s got the all-important Dual Stack HS Tele Wiring that helps keep the humbucker clear and some of the harshness out of that bridge single-coil.
Fender promises “midrangy snarl and bite from the bridge pickup and warm, clear note definition from the split-coil neck pickup”. Park the three-way pickup selector switch in the middle position for a more balanced “shimmering” tone.
Typical of the breed, this very much a do-it-all guitar, a w_____rse electric; it’s a rock guitar, a blues guitar, a jazz guitar… A metal guitar? Why the heck not!? Fallon? He describes it as a hammer – a $6,825 hammer but a hammer nonetheless.
“There’s only the switches, and the volume and the tone, and that’s really all you got so you better figure it out,” says Fallon. “It’s about taking what you can do and making the best of that, and I think this is the guitar for that. If you need a hammer, that’s a hammer, and everyone needs a hammer. You cannot build a house without it.”
If the Telecaster is historically a simple dish then rest assured the Fender Custom Shop is giving us our money’s worth by pulling out all the stops with the build. Here we have the double-bound alder body, a ‘60-Style Oval “C” rift-sawn maple neck and flat-laminated dark AAA rosewood fingerboard with a 9.5" radius.
By this point you might be wondering why it is called a ’59 Telecaster Custom – and has some of that era’s appointments, such as the ‘wing-style string tree on the headstock – but Fender didn’t launch the humbucker/single-coil variant of the Tele Custom until 1972, when the Deluxe was also released.
So it’s, what? A little confusing that this is called a ’59 Tele Custom. Yes. But it ties in with The Gaslight Anthem theme.
The ’59 Sound was the New Jersey rock stalwarts breakthrough album. And this was the guitar Fallon had gravitated towards having weaned himself on Bruce Springsteen and The Clash. Though we have to credit a Fender amp for providing the actual '59 Sound.
"I remember my dad had loaned me some money for a Telecaster, so I got that," said Fallon, speaking to MusicRadar's Rob Laing in 2018. "I had the Bassman that I built – the '59 Bassman. It was literally the '59 sound. So I just built one and I found these crazy parts. I kept going and playing through old ones in different stores, then I would go home and correct mine to sound closer to that and I would keep doing it for two years before I got it right."
The Brian Fallon ’59 Telecaster Custom is available now, priced £6,199/$6,825, and that price includes a hard-shell guitar case, guitar strap and COA. Watch Fallon demo it above – and find out more over at the Fender Custom Shop.
