“I compared the two, and the $140 Squier Telecaster, to me, sounded better”: Jeff “Skunk” Baxter on the time he chose a budget Squier over its ’58 vintage counterpart – which cost “about a bazillion dollars”
Do vintage guitars always sound and feel objectively better than their affordable counterparts? Not necessarily, as many high-profile guitarists have discovered.
Back in 2021, Mike Rutherford revealed he was using a $200 Squier Bullet Tele while playing live with Genesis, saying: “I just love it. It’s got a life to it.” Naturally, a band of Genesis’s calibre would have been able to get their hands on pretty much any instrument they desired, so Rutherford’s evangelism of his affordable Squier was even more potent.
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Now, former Steely Dan guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter has voiced his love of cheap guitars, reflecting on the time he spent $140 on a Squier Telecaster which he thought sounded better than its ‘58 vintage counterpart.
In a new interview with Guitar World, he recalls the Squier Tele being the most recent guitar he bought for himself.
“I buy a lot of guitars for veterans’ charities and stuff like that,” he explains. “But let’s see… the last guitar I bought for myself, I think, was a Squier Telecaster that has a Jazzmaster pickup installed for rhythm. It’s a great guitar. I bought it just for the hell of it.”
He continues: “I saw it and thought, ‘Wow, a Jazzmaster pickup,’ and it was put in at the factory. I played it and really loved it, so I told the guy at Guitar Center, ‘Pull down that ‘58 Telecaster you have up there,’ which cost about a bazillion dollars, and I spent about an hour setting up the [Squier] guitar.
“They had a guitar repair guy there, and I asked if I could use his tools and set up the guitar myself. And very quickly, I compared the two, and the $140 Squier Telecaster, to me, sounded better, so I bought it. I said, ‘Yep, gonna have one of these,’ so I think that’s the last guitar I bought.”
You might think $140 is a solid deal on a guitar in any case, but Baxter also notes how he recorded his parts for Donna Summer’s Hot Stuff on a $35 six-string.
“In terms of value for money, that would be a Burns Baby Bison guitar that I bought for 35 bucks. I ended up using it on the Donna Summer album and also started playing it in the studio as well as playing it live. It was a hell of a deal.”
Vintage guitar collecting tends to be a rich person’s game, with many instruments commanding thousands, and sometimes tens of thousands. So the availability of far cheaper budget versions of these guitars – which sound and feel high-quality for their price point – means more guitarists are discovering they don’t need to spend loads to get a solid instrument.
And even vintage guitar enthusiasts often emphasise that there’s no need to shell out more money than you can afford to get a great guitar setup.
Recently, blues maestro Joe Bonamassa – a big-time vintage gear collector – said guitarists don’t need to spend loads on an amp to get a great sound.
“You don’t have to spend a lot of money to get a great sound, and it doesn’t have to be overly complex,” he said.
The post “I compared the two, and the $140 Squier Telecaster, to me, sounded better”: Jeff “Skunk” Baxter on the time he chose a budget Squier over its ’58 vintage counterpart – which cost “about a bazillion dollars” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
