Check out the SX Taurus Furrian MN NA Telecaster, demo and review by Matt Stottmann. I managed to snag this bad boy during Rondo Music's Christmas sale. $120 bucks got a beautiful, ash bodied Fender Telecaster copy delivered straight to my door. I know what you're thinking; $120 bucks? I can't buy a pizza and fill up my gas tank for that amount of money anymore. This Telecaster has to be a piece of junk, right? Let your ears decide -- first up, I'll play the Tele clean to a very famous riff through a Blackstar HT Studio 20 amp. The Constellation Series SX Taurus Telecaster features a maple neck and fretboard, one-piece ash body, and two single coil pickups. When it first arrived, man, it was a mess. The guitar would have functioned better as a bow and arrow with how high the strings were off the fret board. Luckily enough, with a tweak of the two-way truss rod I got the neck relief up to what I like, quickly. Herein lies the second issue -- the truss rod adjusts at the neck heel, so you have to take the neck off to tweak the truss rod. It doesn't bother me to have it this way, but inexperienced players may find this a deal-breaker, as it can be a big ol' pain in the booty to get the neck relief just right. The fret work could be better -- it has a couple of frets where notes just don't ring out well. You'll need to be able to perform fret work, or have a qualified tech to do it for you to get the most out of this guitar. After taking care of those two issues, this guitar became a monster. The guitar stays in tune well and the two stock ceramic pickups sound KILLER. Not to mention, it's a damn fine looking guitar. Here's a sound sample with some rippin' overdrive. In the end, I'm mighty impressed with the SX Taurus Telecaster. Plays great after some work, sounds awesome, and you can't buy a finished, one piece ash guitar body alone pretty much anywhere for the $120 that this entire guitar costs new. It's truly a nice piece of ash. If you're a beginner or not confident in handling guitar adjustments yourself, don't be put off -- just know that the SX Taurus will play best with some work. After all, there's no better way to learn how to make a guitar play just the way you want it to than by experimenting with setups on a cheap one. Take a moment to check out my channel for other guitar demos, performances, and a glut of high quality jamtracks. I'll leave you with the SX Tele in action over my newest, blues style jamtrack.

• published: 25 Jan 2014
• views: 29352