[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING A FEW PASSAGES ON A FENDER FR 50CE]

OWEN O'MALLEY: Welcome back to Gearwire.Com. I’m Owen O'Malley, and this the Fender F 50CE. It’s an acoustic-electric resonator. The C stand for cutaway. There was an older version of the F 50 that did not have a cutaway; they have added a cutaway now, and they’ve also added some electronics. There’s, as you can see, a Fender Telecaster neck pickup in the neck position right here, and there’s also a Fishman Power Chip Saddle Transducer. It’s a split Micarta saddle nestled in this resonator structure right here. The top wood here is laminate spruce, the back and sides are laminate mahogany, and the neck is [PH] nato. This guitar is -- it’s set up from the factory to play as I’ve just been playing it like not -- it’s not really set up to play slide. It’s really set up to play like a regular guitar. And unplugged, as you can hear, it’s a nice tone but it’s a relatively quiet tone, so let’s plug this guy in and really sound -- hear what sounds it was intended for.

Okay, let’s listen to the Telecaster pickup by itself first.

[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING A FEW PASSAGES ON A FENDER FR 50CE, TELECASTER PICKUP ENGAGED]

Now, there’s a volume and a tone control for the Telecaster pickup. The tone control, let’s just listen to that real quick.

[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING A FEW PASSAGES ON A FENDER FR 50CE, TELECASTER PICKUP ENGAGED, TONE KNOB BEING TWEAKED]

It’s really you can get a very mellow sounding sort of, you know, semi-hollow electric sound coming out of this thing. Let’s bring in the Fishman acoustic transducer.

[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING A FEW PASSAGES ON A FENDER FR 50CE, TELECASTER PICKUP AND FISHMAN ACOUSTIC TRANSDUCER ENGAGED]

Let’s actually take out the Telecaster pickup right now.

[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING A FEW PASSAGES ON A FENDER FR 50CE, FISHMAN ACOUSTIC TRANSDUCER ENGAGED]

Now, you can hear it’s a little bit -- it’s a little tinny. It’s a little bit harsh-sounding, and there’s no tone control for the Fishman pickup. It can be blended in and out with the magnetic pickup sound but it doesn’t have its own tone control in and of itself. Both pickups are just routed through the same output here. There’s a little 9-volt battery compartment right here too. So, really you’re not going to get sort of pure acoustic transducer tones out of this thing that are going to be the most pleasing tones without doing a lot of EQing after the signal has already left the guitar. I think really what the transducer pickup is best for is bringing in a little bit of brightness or a little bit of that acoustic attack to the electric tone.

Let’s play a little slide. I’m not a very good slide player, anyway.

[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING SLIDE ON A FENDER FR 50CE, TELECASTER PICKUP ENGAGED]

Now, that’s just the electric pickup by itself. Let’s bring in a little bit of the transducer.

[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING A FEW SLIDE PASSAGES ON A FENDER FR 50CE, TELECASTER PICKUP AND FISHMAN ACOUSTIC TRANSDUCER ENGAGED]

Kind of a little bit more even.

[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING A FEW SLIDE PASSAGES ON A FENDER FR 50CE, TELECASTER PICKUP AND FISHMAN ACOUSTIC TRANSDUCER ENGAGED]

So you can hear it does add a little bit of, you know, a nice little sort of like acoustic tone to that sort of standard pickup tone, which is not the sort of most like cutting, biting electric tone, and it adds a little cut to it, just adds a little cut to it especially when you’re playing slide. You can convert this thing to be used as like a neck or like a lap slide guitar. You can get like, you know, those little conversion nuts that you just put under the nut here. This nut is actually that tusk which is that sort of like fake bone material, and it actually sounds pretty nice. It has a really nice, if quiet, acoustic tone, and it does have some pretty cool and useable electric tones too. This guitar goes for about $650 retail, and it’s made in China by Fender. It’s the Fender F 50 CE resonator guitar, acoustic-electric. I’m Owen O'Malley and You've been watching Gearwire.Com. Thanks.