He’s famous for what he does with words, but Jason Isbell can make magic with a guitar too. And while technology doesn’t yet allow you to download Isbell’s songwriting skills, you can buy one of his guitars. Fender’s Jason Isbell Custom Telecaster is a fresh personal twist on the Tele, that eternally malleable Leo Fender design which dates back to at least 1950.
Fenders have been a part of Isbell’s life since he was a 12-year-old North Alabama kid learning how to play Pearl Jam songs on a Strat he got for Christmas. A few decades and four Grammys later, Fenders remain an integral part of Isbell’s folk songs and rock & roll music.
“I honestly think the Telecaster is probably the best guitar design of all time,” Isbell says in a promo video. “Just because of how durable it is and how versatile it is. I can always find a good tone on a Telecaster.”
Fender staff in Nashville worked with Isbell for around two years to get details of his Custom Telecaster exact, says Fender director of artist marketing Ben Blanc-Dumont. Blanc-Dumont had read interviews in which Isbell professed his affection for Telecasters. The two were formally through Isbell’s record producer Dave Cobb, who is based out of Nashville’s storied RCA Studio A.
As a guitarist, Isbell’s eloquent, passionate lines span from Skydog slide and chicken-fried bends to indie-rock atmosphere. He’s done so since his early career with punk-tinged Southern rock band Drive-By Truckers.
RELATED: The secrets of Drive-By Truckers’ trippy album covers
The Jason Isbell Custom Telecaster is actually an amalgam of two fave Teles from Isbell’s collection: A vintage 1965 candy apple red Telecaster he’s had for years and a newer Custom Shop Tele Fender sent Isbell while he was recording 2015 album “Something More Than Free.”
The Isbell Custom Tele’s boasts a ‘59-style body, chocolate sunburst finish, cream double-binding, maple neck and 21-fret rosewood fingerboard. The black pickguard and white pickup selector switch reflect aesthetic modifications Isbell made to that Custom Shop Tele that Fender sent him in the studio.
For the new signature guitar’s pickups, the component that transforms string vibrations into electrical signal, Isbell worked with Fender chief engineer/tone guru Tim Shaw. “Some artists have an instrument they’re associated with, and it’s a specific model, a specific time period,” Shaw tells me over a Zoom video chat. He checks in from Fender’s Nashville research and development office. “(Bruce) Springsteen has a ‘53 Tele that he’s really known for. Jason has played a bunch of instruments with a bunch of different features.”
For his custom Tele, Isbell wanted to replicate the sound of the ‘65 Telecaster’s bridge pickup (the pickup nearest the hardware that supports strings on a guitar body). With the neck pickup (the pickup nearest a guitar’s neck), Isbell wanted a “Twisted Tele,” a pickup, invented by talented late master builder Alan Hamel, which achieves a tone similar to Fender’s other flagship guitar, the Stratocaster.
“The bridge and the neck pick up have to work as a team,” Shaw says, “because you don’t want either to overpower the other. But there has to be magic in that middle setting too. And a lot of people discount that. The first time I kick the guitar on, go to the middle pickup setting and whack a chord there had better be an ‘oh yeah’ kind of moment. And there very much was on this.”
Shaw is well known among tone chasers. In the early ‘70s, while playing in local bands and working in a guitar shop in Kalamazoo, Mich., he learned from Bill Lawrence, the now legendary pickup designer who hung out at that same store. Soon Shaw, who studied drama in college, realized his destiny was in guitars and not the theatrical stage. He had a 14-year run at Gibson, that other ultra-iconic electric guitar company. He’s been at Fender now for 25 years. His many projects there have include updating the American Standard Strat.
RELATED: The story behind Jason Isbell’s biggest album yet
Shaw relishes the dark-arts aspect of his work. With pickups, there are things you can hear you can’t measure and things you can measure you can’t hear. “There’s a whole lot of voodoo to this,” Shaw says, “and it’s really fun to get into these odd little variables, mess with stuff and just hear what happens.”
The Isbell Tele’s pickups were tested through a variety of low wattage amps with no effects pedals, the devices that artificially color an electric guitar sound, in the signal chain. “I’m a firm believer,” Shaw says, “in the fact that if a guitar with a cord into an amplifier doesn’t sound good, no pedal in the world will save that.”
Shaw recent work includes pickups for country star Brad Paisley. He collaborated with Isbell during Isbell’s frequent pre-pandemic visits to Fender’s Nashville artist relations room, when Isbell wasn’t touring. “It’s a pleasure to do a guitar like this,” Shaw says, “where you have a player who appreciates nuance, who can play to nuance. Where all the little colors we get off the pickups really appeals to him. Jason’s very much that guy. He’s also a great human being, and fun to hang with.”
In a promotional video for his Telecaster, Isbell is shown playing meditative slide guitar bits. He also digs into a Stones-meets-Tom-Petty version of his song “Something More Than Free,” accompanied by Sadler Vaden, guitarist in Isbell’s longtime backing band The 400 Unit. Isbell’s guitar tones therein are natural and warm.
RELATED: How Jason Isbell’s 400 Unit became the E Street Band of their era
Fender shipped me a loaner Isbell Telecaster so I could experience what this guitar sounds and feels like. In mid-May, a large rectangular cardboard box arrived on my light-blue front porch. Inside that box was a black vinyl guitar case containing an Isbell Tele.
This Telecaster feels like it’s already got some miles on it, right out of case. No showroom stiffness. This is from Fender’s Road Worn finishing process that gives a new guitar patina. In addition to visual appeal, there’s also a practical, tactile effect. The wear makes the guitar more playable, particularly the neck. In my hands, the Isbell Tele had a solidity and weight to it. Even unplugged when strummed rings like a bell, thanks to Leo Fender’s genius utilitarian design.
Now it was time to see how she sings and screams. Plugged the Isbell Telecaster into my vintage 1967 Fender Deluxe Reverb amplifier. Test drove the guitar with the amp at about half volume and then later totally dimed, running through leads, chords, slide and Open G tuning, on the three different pickup settings.
The bridge pickup has all that sweet twang and spank you want from a Tele. And lots of oomph too, some growl and teeth well suited for hard-rock, and a reminder Jimmy Page played a Telecaster on early Led Zeppelin recordings, as well as his studio solo on “Stairway to Heaven.”
RELATED: Jason Isbell covers classic Metallica song for Black Album anniversary
The Isbell Tele’s neck pickup sounds bluesy and round, well suited for roadhouse vibes. In the middle pickup position, the guitar sounds crystalline. It really sparkles. I also love the affordability. The Isbell Telecaster is priced at $1,499, a solid deal for a quality, interesting signature guitar like this.
“I hope this guitar will be one that I can see in a lot of different levels of players’ hands,” Isbell says. “I get excited when I see a famous guitar play something I’ve been involved with, but I also get excited when I see a 13-year-old girl on Instagram playing it.” After living with the Isbell Tele for a couple weeks, I put it back in its case and the same box in which it arrived and shipped it back to California, where Fender is headquartered. It felt like I’d shipped a little bit of me back with that guitar too.
Other musicians with Fender signature model guitars include heavyweight players like blues god Buddy Guy, fusion/rock legend Jeff Beck and heavy-metal virtuoso Yngwie Malmsteen. Artist models can get crazy pricey sometimes. For example, a limited edition exact replica of Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready’s 1960 Strat released this year went for $15,000. And yes, the comma is in the right place.
Telecasters can be heard on essential recordings by an array of artists like Muddy Waters, Booker T. & the M.G., The Beatles, The Police, Jeff Buckley and a fleet of hotshot country pickers. The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards is perhaps the most famous and visible Telecaster proponent.
Isbell’s known for mixing folk and rock sounds, with a pinch of country and alternative. His custom model guitar ably covers that spectrum. A sonic reflection of the artist it’s named for.
He didn’t want his name actually on the guitar though. On many signature model guitars, the artist’s signature is reproduced on the instrument’s headstock. But Isbell didn’t go that route. Instead his anchor and dove logo, which also appears on his merch and stage backdrop, is etched into the neckplate, on the back of the guitar.
“I really wanted guitar players who had no interest in me or my music to still be interested in the instrument,” Isbell says. A Green Hill native and former Muscle Shoals resident, Isbell has lived in the Nashville area for a while now. His Tele promo video includes footage of him tending for chickens his family keeps on their sizable country estate.
Michael Bethancourt has been Isbell’s guitar tech since 2015. Before that, he teched for the likes of My Morning Jacket, Lyle Lovett and Alison Krauss and Union Station. He says Isbell tours with around 12 or so guitars, transported in a road case called a “guitar vault.” Onstage Isbell plays through five or so amplifiers.
“We look at our guitar vault as a toll box not a trophy case,” Bethancourt says. He checks in for this phone interview from Isbell’s band storage facility outside Nashville. He’s spending the day with soldering iron in hand, reconfiguring Isbell’s onstage guitar rig.
Bethancourt estimates Isbell plays 30 to 40 percent of the songs in the live show on Telecasters, including the new custom model “That sound is just gonna hit you right between the eyes. And it’s a hard thing to recreate with any other guitar.” Songs in the set Isbell typically plays Teles on include “Something More Than A Free,” “Dress Blues” and the rollicking “Super 8.” If the band’s doing a Stones cover, like “Gimme Shelter” or “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” Isbell will reach for a Tele.
Exactly what Tele that Isbell plays on what song is an on-the-fly decision. “It’s kind of the last bastion of punk rock, I think, for both of us,” Bethancourt jokes. “It can be a little bit of surprise what guitar makes it to a song on any given night.”
A Texas native, Bethancourt first was drawn to guitar by the music of blues-rocker Stevie Ray Vaughan. Later as he played in his own bands, he learned how to work on his gear to save money on repairs. When the touring band Bethancourt was playing keyboards with no longer had a budget for keys they offered him a gig as a tech. Things took off for him from there.
He got his job with Isbell after being called in to fix a vintage Gibson SG during one of Isbell’s multi-night runs at historic Nashville venue Ryman Auditorium. His responsibilities have grown from guitars to also include road managing.
RELATED: Jason Isbell on losing sleep over COVID, getting back on the road
As a guitarist, Bethancourt says Isbell always wants to stay inspired. “And sometimes that’s going to be turning on ‘Zeppelin III.’ And sometimes that’s going to be turning out a Billie Eilish record, because the way she looks at melody might be a little bit different from him.”
Blanc-Dumont works with about 500 or so artists on Fender’s roster. He’s had a big hand in bringing home signature products, like roots-music star Chris Stapleton’s custom model guitar amp.
Blanc-Dumont says some hardware features were a priority for Isbell on his Telecaster. He wanted adjusting the truss rod, the internal component stabilizing a guitar’s neck, to be possible without, unlike vintage Teles, unbolting the neck. “That makes those adjustments go quicker and easier,” Blanc-Dumont says. Isbell also asked for the bridge plate, which connects the bridge to the body, to be shaved down, “so you have an easier access to the strings.” But without sacrificing a classic Tele look.
Blanc-Dumont believes everything Fender and Isbell put into the guitar’s total design paid off. “That guitar feels like an old friend,” he says. Blanc-Dumont has been with Fender about nine years. He first got into guitars as a youth listening to Pete Anderson’s honky-tonk licks on Dwight Yoakam albums. He owns some sweet guitars, including a ‘60s Tele he proudly shows during our Zoom video interview.
There’s an added bonus of working with Isbell for Blanc-Dumont. He’s a huge fan who’s seen many Isbell concerts. He admires how as a songwriter Isbell “speaks about themes like love that been talked about for some time, but always finds a way to be creative.”
Blanc-Dumont points out Leo Fender himself was a music fan, but not actually a guitarist. “He was so good at listening to artists, because he loved the music and he knew what they wanted. It’s something we still do. Innovation and listening to artist feedback.”
A custom model guitar is the most passionate of passion projects. Where even a multi-Grammy winning star is taken back to their childhood bedroom jamming daydreams. As Isbell puts it, “I try to think don’t ever get too cool for this kind of stuff.”
For more info or to order a Jason Isbell Custom Telecaster visit fender.com.
MORE ON MUSIC
The Black Crowes’ Rich Robinson on the secrets of ‘Shake Your Money Maker’
Prince’s proteges, collaborators and muses: 15 essential tracks
Swampers bassist David Hood remembers Charlie Watts, Stones’ Muscle Shoals sessions
Ad Choices