American Nashville B-bender

[tele-gal]

Hi guys,

Im in the market to buy a b-bender tele, and Im especially interested in the american nashville b-bender tele. Im a big fan of having that strat sound option, but also need that twangy bridge pick up that only a tele can give you. I probably will change the bridge and neck pick ups after buying to vintage or antiques. Does anyone have one? If so, what do you think of it? Also, if anyone has the white version, would you be interested in selling?

Thanks for your input!

[ScatMan]

I bought the sun-burst version 2 months ago. It is a pretty heavy guitar if that matters to you. You can do a search on this forum for discussions on the weight of the Parsons/Green bender vs. the Parsons/White. It's also a poplar body.

I usually play a guitar stock a while before I start messing with pickup changes, etc., but I just couldn't get the stock bridge p/u to twang like I wanted even after trying different playing techniques, p/u height adjustments, amps, settings, etc. It just sounded compressed.

I played an '08 American standard Tele with the same bridge p/u as my bender to compare and got the same compressed type sound, so I changed the bridge p/u in my bender to a Seymour Duncan Broadcaster.

It also seems I spent a lot of time adjusting string height to get a comfortable medium-low action without fretting out on the higher frets. More so than any of my other guitars.

[Dogbear]

I also have one and if you search the forum you can find a number of write ups and discussion about them. The one thing that everyone agrees on is that they are heavy. Mine is as heavy as my Les Paul and I wouldn't want to play it standing up all night. Since you are looking at changing the guitar right out of the box, why not build what you want in the first place. The Nashville really doesn't sound like a standard tele or a strat, more like a hybrid. That being said, you can't get an American standard tele with a P/G cheaper than the package deal from Fender.

You didn't say if you currently play or have played a bender. If you haven't, go find and play a couple of the different types (external, internal, P/G, P/W, long throw, short throw, etc.) before you buy. They are all benders, but all very different.

http://www.tdpri.com/telephoto/data/.../IMG_1009_.jpg

[jazzbender]

I've had one for about a year now, and I really like it. It is a bit heavy, but if you have a strong back and a weak mind like me it's not an issue. I'm a jazzer who is still getting his feet wet with country, so I'm not well versed in the tone quest that's being discussed. But it plays great and through my Line6 I can tweak the settings to get a good sound.

[bender-freak]

here's the one i bought when they first "hit" the market (96??)...as you can see, i added a Hipshot and now have a B,G and A bend on it, plus drop D...the pickups are "rails" of some sort, and have a Yamaha GI-D synth pup on it....the rails give all the twang i need, plus just a little edge....and yep, it be fairly heavy, but i sit when i play so it's not an issue...stock pups had all the twang ever needed; i just wanted something with a little more "balls" for this particular beast....

[beep.click]

Hey Tele-Gal, welcome to the forum.

I just bought a b-bender Nashville this morning. It's not as twangy as my twangiest Tele, right now, but I think new strings will help.

As someone with several Strats, I will say that the middle pickup is nice, and gives you some useful options -- but frankly, there is NOTHING about the Nashville that sounds at ALL Strat-like, to my ears. That's true of my non-bender Nashville as well, though.

Happy shopping!

[FenderBenderNY]

i got my Nashville Bender about a month ago and i've barely put it down since. i've had good luck getting a good twangy tone running it through my Vox AC-15.

[tele-gal]

thanks very much for the input! Out of curiosity, has anyone tried putting tex mex strat pickups on the neck and middle? Im not necessarily going for the specific strat tone on the neck pick up, but would be interested in seeing what tone that would bring about.

Thanks for your time!

[ScatMan]

Originally Posted by tele-gal

thanks very much for the input! Out of curiosity, has anyone tried putting tex mex strat pickups on the neck and middle? Im not necessarily going for the specific strat tone on the neck pick up, but would be interested in seeing what tone that would bring about.

Thanks for your time!

The Nashville is not stock wired to have the middle p/u active by itself like a Strat. The middle p/u on the Nashville works out of phase with the bridge p/u in the 2nd position and out of phase with the neck p/u in the 4th position like a Strat, but the middle position is neck and bridge only like a typical Tele. if that info affects your p/u choice.

btw: You'll have to do some pickguard modding to put a Strat-type p/u in the neck position. Maybe someone else has experience with this type of mod.

[beep.click]

tele-gal, I'm not convinced anything is going to make a Tele sound like a Strat. My new b-bender doesn't, and my old regular Nashville doesn't either.

Good, musically useful sounds -- yes; Strat-like, I'd have to say -- no.

[robt57]

Originally Posted by beep.click

tele-gal, I'm not convinced anything is going to make a Tele sound like a Strat. My new b-bender doesn't, and my old regular Nashville doesn't either.

Good, musically useful sounds -- yes; Strat-like, I'd have to say -- no.

Yea, I'd say especially in the middle of the neck, as in 10th to15th fret, my Tele with a Strat Neck PUP [Alnico V 6.5k] gets throaty Strat sounding, pretty much very Strat. But not so much up high and down low IMO

[eugenedunn]

Hey Telegal!

Welcome to the great Forum! Hopefully you post some pics of your gear soon.....especially if you decide to get a new B-bender axe.

I have a Tex Mex Strat pickup in my middle position on my 2001 American Nashville B-bender Tele. The neck position pup is a Lollar P90, which is super fat sounding.... close to a humbucker, but it has a bit of crispness that P90's excel at.

Actually, combined with the middle pickup, when using the 5-way selector in position 2, is my favorite combination: it cancels noise because of the interaction of the 2 pickups and it has a bit of Strat-cluck plus the deep fatness of the P90.

Notice, I also reversed my control plate for better control over the volume knob.... pinky volume swells, etc.... That is definitely a key move. I highly recommend it. I got a new pickguard cut by Allparts or Warmoth (one of those..... anyway, it turned out nicely).

Yeah, this guitar is a bit heavy, but I love it dearly. It is my Number One.....actually displaced my beautiful PRS Custom 24 as the "go to" axe. That's because, once you start B-bending, you feel naked playing without one!!!

I even have my acoustic guitar worked on by Gene Parsons himself. He put in an acoustic B-bender in 2004. I had some concerns about him installing his trick system into my 85 Alvarez-Yairi, but it was so worth it.

[Anchoret]

Here's mine. [31 photos, including an award-winner]

Mine is the best-sounding Telecaster (to my ears) that I have ever played. Just lucky, I guess, as there should be nothing distinctive about a set of Delta-Tones with an added Texas Special in the middle.

However, it is simply too heavy to play, simply painful. I don't think I've had it out of the case since these photos were taken a year or two ago.

I have a hypothesis that may offend people (like I care), but I believe that a heavy instrument and its increased inertia is also a contributing cause of the slow bend attack curve that gives the large majority of B-bender playing I've ever heard that awful "seasick" effect.

A good, crisp bend attack is essential to good bender playing, as it is with a choked note, and a lighter instrument may facilitate this. Maybe. It's a logical position, anyway.

[jazzbender]

Nice pictures! You must be a pro to get shots like that. My Nashville is the same color and it doesn't look that good in person.

IMHO, As to your hypothesis, I think a bender in the right hands will sound good, heavy or not.

[Anchoret]

Originally Posted by jazzbender

Nice pictures! You must be a pro to get shots like that. .

I wasn't the photographer, just the owner.

[eugenedunn]

I have a hypothesis that may offend people (like I care), but I believe that a heavy instrument and its increased inertia is also a contributing cause of the slow bend attack curve that gives the large majority of B-bender playing I've ever heard that awful "seasick" effect.

Ya know, Gene Parsons and other bender manufacturers offer "long-throw" lever mechanisms in order to allow that "slow bend attack curve" that you find awful..... There's a lot of art in the slow bend.....


Oh yeah..... it ain't all that heavy.... you can do it for the sheer delight of bending...... or get a stool!?

[Anchoret]

Originally Posted by eugenedunn

Ya know, Gene Parsons and other bender manufacturers offer "long-throw" lever mechanisms in order to allow that "slow bend attack curve" that you find awful..... There's a lot of art in the slow bend.....

I'm not referring to the length or speed of the bend, but the shape of the attack curve.

With a choked or bent note, that's critical or it sounds like a bad bungee experience. Few (if any) non-pro B-bender players players I've ever heard get it right. I think they're overanticipating that hard stop *clunk* or something, and I still think weight is a contributing factor to their disorientation.

Clarence White never evinced this playing defect, BTW.

Oh yeah..... it ain't all that heavy....

I just looked around and found mine and weighed it: Ten pounds, ten ounces.

From behind my back, that's heavy. Too heavy.

I don't know why only two or three pounds makes such a difference between a comfortable instrument to play and one that's almost impossible to play, but somehow it does to lots of people, myself included. No other virtue can compensate for weight in a guitar or bass for me. I have some otherwise wonderful instruments that stay in their cases for that one single reason: Weighing over nine pounds.

[eugenedunn]

I'm not referring to the length or speed of the bend, but the shape of the attack curve.

Gee, maybe I'm just not getting what you're describing..... (^_^)'

I love my 10 pounder just the same..... (I've never weighed it, but it works for me).

[Dogbear]

I just looked around and found mine and weighed it: Ten pounds, ten ounces.

From behind my back, that's heavy. Too heavy.

There's a simple fix for this. Replace the steel unit with an aluminum P/G unit from Hipshot. It's an exact change out and one can save 3/4 pound off the overall weight. Mine weighs just about what a standard tele does with the aluminum unit (plus 6.82 oz to the basic weight of the guitar compared with 18.18 oz for the Fender steel unit). At 10.5 lbs that's a heavy guitar, mine weighed only 10 lbs and that's with Fender locking tuners on it. Replace the tuners with standards and change out the bender and it weighs 9.1 lbs. I believe that Hipshot might just sell you the aluminum back plate if you gave them call.

its increased inertia is also a contributing cause of the slow bend attack curve that gives the large majority of B-bender playing I've ever heard that awful "seasick" effect.

I assume that you have another guitar that has a bender installed and that you do play bender style guitar. IMHO, the "seasick" effect that you speak of is basically bad timing. It doesn't matter what throw you have (very short, short, or long), a mistimed bend is not pretty. There is certainly an art to playing one. BTW, the Fender bender is a short throw. The timing effect is far more noticeable with a long throw. Clarence never had the problem because he was an incredible player with flawless timing and he played a long throw. His guitar was also heavy.

Few (if any) non-pro B-bender players players I've ever heard get it right.

I don't know what to say about this, except to say you must be listening to the wrong players.

[Anchoret]

Originally Posted by Dogbear

IMHO, the "seasick" effect that you speak of is basically bad timing.

Yes and no.

The bend can start at D at the right time and end at E at the right time and still sound awful. It's the timing of what's happening in between that matters.

If you could graph the time/pitch curve of the bend, you'd immediately see what I'm talking about. A bend that is attractive to the ear is usually not linear, but has a much more front-loaded attack.

Of the four ways I can offhand think of to bend a single note on a guitar-like instrument -- choking a fretted note with your finger, using a slide, stepping on a pedal steel's pedal or using a lever B-bender device -- with the possible exception of the pedal, the B-bender presents the most physical difficulty in finely nuancing the attack curve of a bend. In inexpert hands, the B-bender produces a linear bend -- at best. It's usually very tentative at both ends or slow at the beginning and too fast at the end...or some other mess.

The pedal in a pedal steel has the same inherent vice, but in that it is usually controlling only part of the action, it gets some cover from a more pleasing "humanized" bend attack coming from the player's slide action bending the notes on other strings.

With a B-bender, the other notes are typically static, leaving the bend attack of the device right out there in the open for the whole world to hear -- so it had better be good!

A fine player will instinctively fight and master the physical difficulty in producing the right attack with a B-bender, but there are not very many fine players (I'm certainly not one of them).

There is certainly an art to playing one.

The problem I hear with B-bender players is that they are concentrating on the mechanical action of the device rather than the sound of the note.

They do not seem to understand the problem they face. They figure if they start pushing at the right time and hit the stop at the right time they've done their job and it must be fine.

They remind me of the huge majority of people who rely on electronic tuners to get their open strings "in tune" without considering the relative temperament within a played chord or even intonation defects of the played fretted notes. The machine says their guitar is "in tune" so it is. They don't (and won't) hear that their played pitch is off [more people are more gravely deluded about electronic tuners than any other type of gear that I can think of, and that's saying a lot].

A B-bender is an extremely difficult device to play well and a very easy one to play badly. It requires not only a huge amount of practice to master, but a very good ear and a clear idea of what not to do with it.

[EZchair Picker]

Originally Posted by tele-gal

Hi guys,

Im in the market to buy a b-bender tele, and Im especially interested in the american nashville b-bender tele. Im a big fan of having that strat sound option, but also need that twangy bridge pick up that only a tele can give you. I probably will change the bridge and neck pick ups after buying to vintage or antiques. Does anyone have one? If so, what do you think of it? Also, if anyone has the white version, would you be interested in selling?

Thanks for your input!

My nashville is my favorite tele. I actually like the 2 and 4 positions on the nashville better than either of my strats. I'd best describe it as quack with bite. It's got the american series deltatone pups along with a texas special in the middle, so it's not exactly like they're throw aways or nuthin. You may want to play them for a while before you decide to ditch em. Some don't care much for the PG bender in them either, but ignorance being bliss....it's the only strap activated bender I've ever used and I really like it.

Good luck on finding one though! Fender still lists them on their website, but I'm convinced that they're discontinued.

[Anchoret]

Originally Posted by EZchair Picker

My nashville is my favorite tele. I actually like the 2 and 4 positions on the nashville better than either of my strats. I'd best describe it as quack with bite.

I think I agree.

The sound from the stock pickups works out very nicely on some of these, mine included.

I'm still not absolutely convinced that the pickups are identical to standard Delta-Tones as mine have substantially higher DCR than the ones in my regular US Telecaster made but a few months previously. On the other hand, it's possible that production Delta-Tones evolved and specifications changed "without notice," as the disclaimer goes.

Good luck on finding one though! Fender still lists them on their website, but I'm convinced that they're discontinued.

They have been before, which is how I got mine for $499.99 new at Guitar Center some years back. FMIC carries discontinued stuff on their site for roughly a year, or until the heavily-overworked Brad finds time to take it down. Stuff goes out of production due to demand also, but is not technically dropped, barring a renewal of demand. I think this might be what's happening with their B-Benders at the moment.

[Dave Hopping]

Here's my Nashville B-bender.A little heavy at 9 pounds,but it does the Strat thing well enough to get along with my Mesa-Boogie Mk 3,which my other Teles definitely don't do.
It's stock except for a Schaller banjo tuner on the low E and a tortoise pickguard.The original was MOTS.

[eddiewagner]

i wish i had one.....

[thebbender]

i gig with mine and its not too heavy to play a 2 hour gig with. i put a barden neck and a barden s-deluxe strat mid pickup in mine. if you really like strat sounds rewire it to have mid pickup only in the third switch position. its sounds great this way.

[Mandoman]

I have a 2007 Black finish. I like it except I'll probably change the neck and bridge pups to vintage pups. I don't mind the weight. Just get a wider strap. I have trouble getting the twang but that has more to do with my stock champ 600

MM

[Don Miller]

I had an am Std b bender...used the same pickups as the old American Standard line..which I think are the same as they use in the Nashville American B bender..I swapped them out..initally for some fender aftermarket "vintage" type pickups and eventually for some velvet hammers. I also changed to tone cap to a .047 mfd....stock for this guitar is .022. The "twang " increased considerably...I put the Am Std pups in another guitar and A-Bed them with the VHs and the difference was considerable.

One of the combos I liked was a 52 RI bridge pckup and a 57-62 strat pup in the neck. I bet the 52 RI neck would work too if you didnt want to hassle installing a strat pickup...and they can be had fairly inexpensively....You can get alot of twang out of a champ 600 wth the right guitar..or right pickups in the guitar.

[thebbender]

Originally Posted by Don Miller

I also changed to tone cap to a .047 mfd....stock for this guitar is .022. The "twang " increased considerably...

+1 for changing the cap to .047. i also put in new pots 1 250k in vol and 230k in tone and rewired the guitar w/ 5 way strat switch using the fender big block tele wiring diagram. no more ice pick highs!!! my bardens sing through this guitar now. check the tone pot on your stock fender nashville b bender with a multimeter. the tone pot actually goes to no load when fully opened up, and this no load was the source of many ice picks to my ears.

[jmiles]

I use the 5-way switch, and also a push/pull pot to get all available combinations. My push/pull pot turns on the bridge pup. That way I can get bridge/neck, and all three on at once.