Seriously, How good is the RI '72 MIM Thinline?

[CrazyCanuck]

Hi all, I have a mild case of GAS. I can buy '72 RI Thinline in Canada for $800.00 Can.The prices at GC are around the same price range. Now I love the way it looks and I think the HB's on this Tele adds a new dimension to it but I would like your opinion on the guitar itself. It's made in Mexico. The MIM guitars have been downgraded for a long time. How's the quality on the RI Thinline? How's the finish? Pups any good? Will I have to swap them for something better? I'm going to take out for a test run this week and I know I have the last word on buying it but your thoughts on whether or not it's a good buy is valued. Thank you, and have a nice day.

 

[Ringo]

I got a natural finish 72 RI with the humbuckers, used some years ago, it felt great, played well and sounded good. The pickups are more like Gibson pickups.
I'm sure you know that the pickups are not the same as those in the original models, but they sounded ok , there are some upgrades , check out Telenator who posts here, among others.

I don't know about the MIM guitars being downgraded, what is that supposed to mean?
If anything I think the quality of the MIM guitars has improved vastly over the last 10 years or so.

And FWIW I'd try to find a good deal on a used one, there are a lot of them around, used will knock a lot of money off the cost.

ANY new guitar that you pay retail for will immediately depreciate in value , so if you don't love it, down the road expect to sell it for much less than you paid for it.
If you get a good deal on a used one, you might break even or just lose a little if you sell it later.

 

[boris bubbanov]

Replacing the pickups is cost prohibitive IMO. Replacements are too expensive relative to the cost of the rest of the guitar, and the money spent on the guitar plus new pickups exceeds the cost of much more esteemed guitar models.

The tuners make me unhappy, and there's no premium version of them. You gotta pull one kind off, put on another kind and it will leave unused holes in the back of the headstock that are unsightly. You could add that cost to the cost of the pickups and possibly a different pickguard if needed and you have a headache.

If I got the guitar used, and for free, I'd do the changes. Otherwise, I've learned my lesson.

 

[Telenator]

I have Deluxe, Custom and Thinline re-issues and will say right up front that these guitars are much better than the ones made in the 70's.

They're lighter, the finishes are better, all the parts fit together better, and they play great.

As for value?

Let's look at something like a Nash Tele Custom. It's $2200.

If you bought a Fender Tele Custom re-issue for $700, even if you put one of our Limited Edition CuNiFe WRHB's in it, you'd still have the entire guitar for $1150. HALF PRICE!

That's a real Fender Telecaster Custom with a real CuNiFe WRHB in it, and the guitar is actually better quality than the vintage original.

Compared to many of the non-Fender copies out there, I think the Fender re-issues are a terrific value even with the pickup upgrades.

 

[RedTele58]

I gotta agree w/ Telenator. I too own a re-issue MIM Deluxe, Custom and Thinline and I think they are all 3 great guitars. I think too many people here get hung up about the perception of "muddy" humbuckers in these guitars. If you just can't get past them, get yourself the Telenator upgrades.

Also - the guitars coming out of Mexico the past few years have absolutely nothing wrong with them; especially for what they cost.

I don't think you can go wrong with a new Thinline. I love mine.

 

[hongaku]

I have Deluxe, Custom and Thinline re-issues and will say right up front that these guitars are much better than the ones made in the 70's.

They're lighter, the finishes are better, all the parts fit together better, and they play great.

As for value?

Let's look at something like a Nash Tele Custom. It's $2200.

If you bought a Fender Tele Custom re-issue for $700, even if you put one of our Limited Edition CuNiFe WRHB's in it, you'd still have the entire guitar for $1150. HALF PRICE!

That's a real Fender Telecaster Custom with a real CuNiFe WRHB in it, and the guitar is actually better quality than the vintage original.

Compared to many of the non-Fender copies out there, I think the Fender re-issues are a terrific value even with the pickup upgrades.

What he said!

 

[Controller]

I really like my stock '72 RI thinline, pickups and all. I gig with it and I don't have a problem with muddiness.

I would say try a few for yourself. You can pick one up used for around $500. As Telenator said, if you don't like the pickups there are a number of choices.

 

[Staggered Mag]

I gotta agree w/ Telenator. I too own a re-issue MIM Deluxe, Custom and Thinline and I think they are all 3 great guitars. I think too many people here get hung up about the perception of "muddy" humbuckers in these guitars. If you just can't get past them, get yourself the Telenator upgrades.

Also - the guitars coming out of Mexico the past few years have absolutely nothing wrong with them; especially for what they cost.

I don't think you can go wrong with a new Thinline. I love mine.

I agree!

 

[davenumber2]

I have a MIM Deluxe and I really like it. The neck pickup may be a bit muddy but I don't use it much anyway. The bridge has that nice thick humbucker sound but you never forget it's a tele. Recommended.

 

[Racer5]

The Thinline is good, but I get along better with the Deluxe. Love the neck, love the body.

 

[dracoustics]

I rarely post but I wanted to chime in. For years I wanted one of the 72' Thinline reissues, and one day I found a red one on ebay. Took the the plunge and now it's my main guitar. I found the orginal humbuckers to be a bit muddy, or even tinfoil-ish, as my bandmates put it. So I did some research and finally settled on the Lace Hemi Humbuckers. Both pickups are coil-tapped as well. The neck bucker is still a bit dark for my purposes, but I do get some great chimey tones, with several combinations of single coil and humbucker. I play through a Fender Deluxe Reverb Reissue, and rely on an MI Audio Blues Pro for me real drive sounds. I only play rhythm, and I think it sounds great overall.

I paid $700 for the guitar in near mint condition (probably a bit much), though each one of the tuning keys was strangely missing a screw... easy fix. With about $150 for the pickups, and about $120 for my guitar tech to install and do a little creative styling to cover the extra space (the hemi-humbuckers are a bit smaller)... So for about $1000 I have a beautiful custom thinline that suits me perfectly, and definitely gets stares and drools at the guitar shop and the club... mostly cause it's red!!

Granted this is my first real electric, and I'm a bit biased now. I have a Les Paul Standard as well, but I always come back to my Tele. I have better pics, but this is the only one I have handy. Cheers!

Danny

 

[Chautauqua]

I have Deluxe, Custom and Thinline re-issues and will say right up front that these guitars are much better than the ones made in the 70's.

They're lighter, the finishes are better, all the parts fit together better, and they play great.

As for value?

Let's look at something like a Nash Tele Custom. It's $2200.

If you bought a Fender Tele Custom re-issue for $700, even if you put one of our Limited Edition CuNiFe WRHB's in it, you'd still have the entire guitar for $1150. HALF PRICE!

That's a real Fender Telecaster Custom with a real CuNiFe WRHB in it, and the guitar is actually better quality than the vintage original.

Compared to many of the non-Fender copies out there, I think the Fender re-issues are a terrific value even with the pickup upgrades.

+1

I have a Vintage 73 Tele Deluxe AND a RI 72 Deluxe and I gotta say the fit and finish of the MIM Classic Series is just plain amazing. The Pups in my original 73 are amazing, but overall I gotta say I think that my RI will look a lot better after 40 years even with all the gig rash it's acquiring.

One BIG thing to do is swap the pots for 500K units to get improved tones out of the RI WRHB's... All the guitars with Wide-ranges should have that done stock but oh well it's an easy swap. It also makes a big difference the minute you plug it in again. The WRHB's are anything but "Gibson-ish" to my ears. A lot more chime and versatility IMO. You can get single-coil like tones out of them and the bridge pup when you modulate the tone knob the right way has some great "quack" to it. It's funny but I always hear people talk about using the bridge pup most often but I'm the exact opposite, I play the neck pup 85% of the time but I do mix and switch mid-song a lot. FWIW it pays to mess around with the action, pick-up height and the pole-piece heights to dial in your tone and volume levels. You can add pedals to get a darker tone of more typical HB's but you can't go the other way and make a dark pup sparkly... WRHB's have ruined me for other HB's... I was playing a friends LP the other day (not sure the model/year) and it just didn't feel nearly as dynamic or responsive to attack as my Deluxe nor could I get the neat harmonics and sparkle out of the thing when playing clean. It did chug just fine...ish, but that's more the amp (played both through my Peavey Classic 50-212)

I say go for it, I too have a hankering for a Thin-line to play slide on and I think either that or a Custom would be amazing. You really can't beat the price/value of these guitars.

Cheers

Dave

 

[adjason]

I love their look but I do not much like the pickups

 

[pbenn]

Dark rhythm pickup

The neck bucker is still a bit dark for my purposes,
Danny

Try lowering the bass side of your rhythm pickup 1/2 turn to see if it helps.

 

[variantboy]

I own a '72 RI Thinline (as well as a '69 reissue, both in daphne blue)...

it's a great guitar, with the exception of those pickups. There are two things that mystify me about the pickup situation. First - just because CuNiFe is hard to come by, why change the entire design of the reissue pickup to a bar magnet ?? I'm assuming that was because of cost. Also - once you change the design to bar/humbucking, why stock the guitar with 250k pots, when the originals used 1Meg, and most humbuckers use 500k.

In any case, i paid 660 for mine. And i've had a plan to change the pickups for about 3 years, and just haven't been able to prioritize spending $400-800 on a set of pickups. That said - i know that when i do, the guitar is gonna kill - cause, it's fairly lightweight, has a great vintage style neck, feels like it's built like a tank, and is right smart looking too. When all the mods are made, it's still going to be less than $1500, and my bet is that you'd be hard pressed to buy it's equal for that price. So... overall - I like 'em, but i'll never understand those stock pickups/pots.

 

[Telenator]

You can have those stock re-issue WRHBs modified for $85 each.

Here's an e-mail from the last set we sent out a few days ago.


Dear Telenator,

Although the MOD-1 is your most affordable upgrade, the value is tremendous: What beautiful tones I can now coax out of that instrument.

I must admit that I really only expected a marginal improvement, because I already hated the pickups, but now I know that every word on your web site is true. The MOD-1 pickups you sent me are unbelievable! Now I’m thinking that I need another Thinline just to get the MOD-2’s as well...

Thank you so much for contributing your technical expertise to my music!
A review video is coming soon – I’m not kidding.

Best Wishes to the whole crew,
Roger Hausmann – Bulldog-Guitars

Our website is down for a couple days. Unknown problem. Check back soon.

 

[Chautauqua]

I own a '72 RI Thinline (as well as a '69 reissue, both in daphne blue)...

it's a great guitar, with the exception of those pickups. There are two things that mystify me about the pickup situation. First - just because CuNiFe is hard to come by, why change the entire design of the reissue pickup to a bar magnet ?? I'm assuming that was because of cost. Also - once you change the design to bar/humbucking, why stock the guitar with 250k pots, when the originals used 1Meg, and most humbuckers use 500k.

In any case, i paid 660 for mine. And i've had a plan to change the pickups for about 3 years, and just haven't been able to prioritize spending $400-800 on a set of pickups. That said - i know that when i do, the guitar is gonna kill - cause, it's fairly lightweight, has a great vintage style neck, feels like it's built like a tank, and is right smart looking too. When all the mods are made, it's still going to be less than $1500, and my bet is that you'd be hard pressed to buy it's equal for that price. So... overall - I like 'em, but i'll never understand those stock pickups/pots.

Have you swapped the pots for 500K??? That alone is a huge improvement... The Telenator pups are amazing from the sound clips that I've heard.

 

[Jake_Blues]

About a month ago, I picked up a NOS Natural finish Thinline '72 w/WRHB's. The tag said $499. I got it for $300 and a Chinese-made Hound Dog Deluxe Round neck dobro. It plays great.

Tone wise, I find the neck PUP to be a little dark, particularly playing rhythm with anymore than a little overdrive. Granted, I'm still getting used to tweaking the EQ on my amps. I haven't touched the height or pot values, but at some point I will. (Why? Because I can!) I'll try different PUPs for the same reason. I really like the guitar and modifying it is becoming half the fun. I'd like to record some clips along the way to document the changes, again, another part of the fun with Teles.

I believe I'll try a couple of "tap-able" HB's so I can get a guitar to cover the warm to middle part of the tone spectrum. I'm working on a partscaster that will likely have a lap steel PUP in the bridge and SC's in the middle and Neck positions to cover the bright end of the tone spectrum.

 

[variantboy]

@Chautaqua - i have changed the pots to 500k, still not feeling those stock WRHB's. I think this is mostly because i loathe humbuckers The only humbuckers i've ever liked were mini's in a les paul deluxe, old filtertrons (and i don't like 'em that much), and of course the original WRHB - none of which are like a normal humbucker. so i might be hard to convert in the first place.

@Telenator - i'm definitely familiar with your product, and have checked the clips on your site on many an occasion. The good news is - my favorite sounding ones are the least expensive... so, i probably should just do it. just need to prioritize doing it.

 

[63dot]

I have Deluxe, Custom and Thinline re-issues and will say right up front that these guitars are much better than the ones made in the 70's.

They're lighter, the finishes are better, all the parts fit together better, and they play great.

+1

But that is not saying a whole lot. You can still be much better than a '70s Fender and still not be that great.

Seth Lover had a great design in those pickups and the semi construction is a great plus, but those terrible ultra flat frets from the originals and all reissues makes it hard to play for some. For modest stuff not requiring a lot of lead work, this guitar is great and super versatile in its sound. I am a singer and in a situation where I play only rhythm and sing, this guitar is all I need. But if I was a lead guitar player, I would tend much more toward a MIM '69 thinline reissue since fretwork (like on a real late-1960s Fender) is somewhat more conventional and easy to play lead on.

There will be the odd duck out there who loves those flattened frets for lead and in that case, get this guitar!

And for OP:

The highly anticipated MIM Fender guitars started fairly high quality for price and have only become better over the years. We are in guitar heaven now with the Blacktops, Player Series, and Vintage/Classic Series MIMs to add to the Fender Standard Telecasters.