1985-86 Fender Performer Guitar Review By Scott Grove
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#Fender #Performer #Guitar #Review #Scott #Grove
Originally posted by UCFuEvs_baSE2v4QWtQL2dsw at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ShbWhTH3N0
Love mine I’ve had it since the 90s. Best fender they ever made
Hey Scott, great review! I was wondering if you might know how many Performers were produced? I have one in absolutely mint condition, that I bought new in '86.
I just picked up a sunburst with a hard case from a pawnshop for $147.????????????
Hi Scott, I have a fender performer sunburst like yours. I love the playability of this guitar it want a different sound from the pickups. I want to put in 3 single coils so will need to cut the wood to make room for the middle pickup but don’t want to de-value it by not having it stock. I am already missing the tremolo bar, 3 long screws for intonation adjustment and all the locking nut parts. Maybe it’s already devalued. Should I cut away? Just needing to cut 1cm off to make room for middle pickup. You won’t notice the cuts if I put the pick guard back on. Can you provide me some guidance? Thanks.
love the look. vaguely resembles a Parker Fly.
..and to think, i once believed that buying a vintage Jazzmaster was a good idea…
love this! this has inspired me to go with tbx tone controls and 7 way switching in my strats! no more cork sniffing for me.
Love the Neon Moon riff at 5:40…I've got over a hundred guitars myself and like the odd-ball ones. Like the Elite Knobs on that one. Too bad Fender and Gibson don't have the freedom to innovate….at least they tried it's just too many players are stuck in the 50's and 60's.
Hey Scott, Seasons Greetings. I have been wanting to ask you a few questions for some time now but I guess I am guitarded (lol) I had a hard time figuring out how to reach you. I too agree with you about Elixir strings I use them on my acoustic and Tele and love them! I remember you saying that Elixir doe Not make Polyweb bass strings anymore My questions are: 1 Would the Nanoweb be a good choice for my bass ( I use 40-95 gauge) or do you have a better suggestion for me?. 2 I remember you saying about wood not being a factor with guitar tone on electrics but what about acoustic/electric guitars? any info you could provide would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Rick
ps, i'm sure I have some more dumb questions but that will do for now.
WOW! The electronics are awesome… sounds all over! Never saw one of these, thanks!
I'm not a fan of anything that is a reissue. I never found anything worth having from Fender from back then. lol Just not my kind of things. Don't get me started on tubes. lol I would simply rather have something with the best of the best on it, dead quiet, locking and roller everything and pink if possible. lol Yep, I'm one of those guys who likes his pickups without magnets. lol
The sunburst has already sold and the burgandy mist one has also sold, I have a pearl white one left is all as far as the Performers go. Ebay item number 310605036926
Oh yeah, they are keepers for sure!. Someone along the line will be SO very glad that this one was saved!
Yeah I love the green too. You said that the Japanese Performers were the best quality and i can see why. My father is an avid guitar player/ collector, I'll be sure to keep this one in the family.
Wow, what a great find! I love that Green that the Japanese used on these and a few other axes they came out with back in those days. Does the guitar still have a place in your family?
First: Great Review. Second: a little Story. My father one day after coming home from work found a guitar case next to a dumpster. He grabbed it since it was a nice case that was abandoned. Turns out there was one of these Performers in this case in good condition. The classic metallic green body was chipped slightly but everything else was perfectly fine. It was an amazing stroke of luck. I bet the owner thought it was a cheep guitar and was worthless. One mans trash is another mans treasure.=)
@theminpoes You won't be sorry. Probably one of the most versatile Fender's ever made. The number of sounds out of one axe is simply amazing.
@theminpoes Thank you my friend. I just picked up another one of these in pearl white and have my eye on another. These are just too much fun!
@LJN71 That is true. The Strat and Tele will always be their bread and butter. Most folks can't wrap their minds around anything different than what they have been told for 60 years are Fender's best guitars. So, I really love the oddball stuff and really enjoy it when the musicians inquire as to what the hell I'm playing on the nights that I do pull out the "funky" guitars. Same with my little reviews, it's just fun to try to educate people on the OTHER things out there.
@groovydjs I can´t say I blame Fender for being reluctant to reissue guitars like the Performer and other exotics. When Fender occasionally ventures beyond the safety of Strats,Teles and such,the resulting products may be very good,but they usually don´t sell too well. One gets the impression that a large percentage of Fender´s customer base is rather conservative.Maybe if Fender were to educate people on lesser known models they be interested.I´d love to see a survey done on this issue.
@LJN71 My pleasure. The Heartfield Elan II is great. I just got another Performer this week on kind of a pearl white. What cool axes. Funny that you mention the Katana. I've been looking for a clean one for years. Everybody always beats the heck out of them and the paint (sometimes the wood) is always gone off of the big point. Fender isn't smart enough to do the reissues of the truly cool guitars. The Performer is getting huge money now, but Fender won't touch it, go figure. lol
Thank you so much for posting this clip! As much as I adore the more popular Fender models,I´ve always had a soft spot for the lesser known pieces like the Performer. I´ve never actually heard one before,and I think it sounds wonderful! I´d love to see Fender reissue some of their more obscure guitars like this one and the Katana,but I don´t think it´s very likely. As lesser known Fender products go,I own a Heartfield Elan II myself,and it´s a real gem. 🙂
discountinued LACE pickups????? when i saw this i said "wow there lace….."
@giantrobot9000 Funny you should mention the Elites. I've always loved them and I'm going to grab a pair of the in the next month or so. I just grabbed up a whole new lot from the same time period this past week and I'll be tossing videos of all those up in the next day or 2. Cool stuff.
@Xar0mir I really don't know where you get your information. These are amazing sounding guitars, the pickups are in the perfect postition, sounds galore, very sought after, very rare and very expensive. I think you need to go back to guitar school and learn something my man. They are far from cheap. I guess you have the couple grand to buy one huh? Didn't think so. Nobody wants to get rid of these things, solid investment and go up a couple hundred bucks a year. Do your homework.
@stickymagician Wow, that must have been aweful. I do still have some parts for the Performers. Throw me a pic at this name at aol and I'll see what all I still have left fo you.
The acoustic didn't fair so well through the fire but could be restored with enough money. It did play great though. I don't know where they ran across these instruments. I bought the Performer and a hard shell case for 500 bucks and the acoustic for 200. I loved both these instruments and still play the Fender Performer although I do tend to be sparing with it just play it in safe environments LOL. Any suggestions to finding parts would be greatly appreciated. Send a pic of mine to U? Thanks.
I own that one the exact same model. Mine went through a house fire and it melted the case around the neck but the guitar was saved just has a blackened wood grain around the headstock now. I am currently looking for a fine tuning key and a neck nut for mine. I bought it in Burkesville Kentucky at a little store called J's Discount it's out of business now but at that same store I bought an acoustic called Suzuki Nagoya which were presents to the violin music students at the Nagoya music school.
@AlexSongDoesCovers Thank you for dropping by. Such a cool axe.
@mikejcd Hi there Mike. Ebay is one of the only places that these show up and one shows up about every 4-6 months. Other than that…..you can google it and one will show up in a vintage guitar shop somewhere. They are impossible to find in this condition. I lucked out big time. Usually when folks had them, like you said, they didn't know what they would become and they would just beat the heck out of them. Those are usually what shows up for sale.
That does sound handy, I was unaware of that system. I'll have to go check that out. I would love to have something like that to shake the holy hell out of and return to tune even if I were to pop a string or two in the process. LOL
Yeah, it has all of the tuning problems with the string breakage that all of the whammy's had back in the 80's. There are a few out now that won't go out of tune at all if a string breaks. You can do the whole Floyd type of bends way up and down and no tuning problems when bending either. But this particular rarity came out before that problem was solved.