Fender: Strat vs Tele

cephus

cephus

Slow Children Playing
Which costs more to make? They both cost exactly the same for comparable models. Are they making more on one than the other? Does one have enough budget for better pickups or hardware?
 
it seems like the tele is much easier and cheaper to make. it has a less complicated shape, a fixed bridge and only two pick ups.

when they go for the same price they should be making a lot more profit on the tele.
 
Sorry, but it's useless asking such a question.........unless you ask Fender themselves as only they would know the answer.

Any replies here will be pure uneductated speculation.

:rolleyes:
 
ausrock said:
Any replies here will be pure uneductated speculation.
Click to expand...


"Uneductated speculation" is what I am going for. :D

The way I see it, you can go to ebay and buy ever component to build either. Many people have. Even with Fender's scale and supplier arrangements, the cost between the two should be at least proportional to homebuilt axes.

I thought that the strat had more parts and more cuts so it would be a little more expensive to make than the tele. So does that mean they can use higher quality on the tele and still come in under budget? Then of course, they'd have to worry about making the strat "feel" cheaper than a tele side by side in a store.
 
I'm guessing that a Tele is cheaper to manufacture.

Look at the body - it's pretty much a slab of wood, not contoured, with a couple of routs for the neck pocket, pickups, and controls. The standard Tele bridge......shit, how cheap can it get?
 
At the volumes (of components) Fender are working with, cost variations are likely to be minimal. The same as I would guess that most, if not all timber shaping and routing is automated, so again, cost variations between Tele and Strat components will be minimal.

If memory serves me correctly, back when Fender were making the Tele Plus (the model with 3 Lace Sensors, additional switching option and contoured body), it's price was comparable to a Standard Strat......both models had 3 p/ups and the wiring was different but of similar complexity.........so there was some realistic parity in the pricing.

I doubt that retail pricing can ever be a fair indicator to actual manufacturing costs regardless of whether it's Fender, Gibson, PRS or any other major manufacturer.

:cool:
 
I would guess that they both have <$100 of parts and labor involved. How's that for uneducated speculation?

Production cost has nothing to do with market value, however.
 
Aus Rock si right, the only thing that'll change is variable cost per unit. With regards to that, the Tele probably requires less resources. Labour cannot be taken into account, Overhead si probably applied on a fixed rate.
 
strat $

i bought every single part needed to build my strat on line .. ebay etc .... w/ the tweed case cost $400 .... now i have the exact strat i always wanted :D
 
The retail pricing of Strats And Teles i based solely on what the market will bear. They'll keep charging those prices and more as long as we're willing to pay that much. It's the American way.
 
ausrock said:
At the volumes (of components) Fender are working with, cost variations are likely to be minimal.
:cool:
Click to expand...

that to me is very backward thinking. I'd think the tiniest variation would quickly become significant when multiplied by the millions of units that Fender spews.

As far as automated processes cranking out necks and bodies, there still is the factor of time and the "labor" cost of paying someone to push the tele button or the strat button. If you can cut 140 tele bodies in the same time it takes to cut 100 strat bodies, that says to me that a tele is cheaper to CNC.

A strat has one extra pot. A tele has a chromed control plate. A strat has $.06 worth of knobs on it, but a tele has $2.00 worth. Three of the most common pickups in the world versus 2 that are slightly less common. It probably takes more time for the intital setup of a strat. Definitely more screws (millions extra a year no doubt, and the man-hours to screw them in). More solder connections=more time.

The intellectual excercise in this for me is that Fender can ultimately spend as much or as little as it wants to make a strat or a tele, as made obvious by their multiple (Affinity, Squier, Fender MIK, Fender MIM, Fender MIA, Fender Custom Shop) pricepoints. Since they are the ones setting the specs from their suppliers, they could make adjustments to suit any cost to them.

That made me think that a simpler guitar should be of a higher quality if it would cost the same as a more complex instrument. But, teles just don't feel like they're of higher quality than a strat. they feel the same (or actually to me, of less quality) as a strat. I start thinking conspiracy and come up with my theory that a tele is a rip off because it is artificially shittied up so people still will buy strats when offered them side by side at the same price. I think the teles should be one notch nicer at a given price. So, I ain't buying one.






OK. I admit it. I am up to my armpits in guitars around here since I started generating a little disposable income. It is just about all I can do not to order a middle of the road, vintage spec, 3-saddle, blond tele with a maple neck. I have to sit here and think of a reason not to. I can't really sell any of the ones I have now, because the only ones I'd get rid of are shitty, but still nice enough to be worth more to me than I could get from them.

I am old, huh? Rat farts!.
 
It's funny....if you go back to the early days of the Tele and Strat, I think the Strat was considered to be a higher-end and higher-spec guitar than the Tele. Additional pickup, better bridge, tremolo. Pricing was correspondingly higher for the Strat.

But the Tele has always had its unique sound, even to the point of that cheap-ass bridge being given credit for contributing a lot to it.

So now the price of a Strat and Tele is more reflective of the instrument as a unique-sounding device than a direct translation of its manufacturing costs.

Also, guitar street prices will vary wildly with disposable income. I recall tracking the MSRP of Martin dreadnoughts in the '70s and '80s, and the prices were all over the place from year to year.
 
Does the shape matter when it comes to cost? I mean it's all just automated machines doing the cutting.
 
Im a strat player. There is no other guitar for me and i've tried most all of them.

Teles are ok...but given a choice i would always pick a strat over a tele for tone, feel, cool looks, versitility, and mojo.
 
But, a strat won't sound like a tele. Once you already have a few strats, it would seem the only reason to buy another would be so you could line them all up on your couch tot ake a picture to post to the harmony central guitar forum.

Can a nashville tele sound like a strat?
 
cephus said:
But, a strat won't sound like a tele. Once you already have a few strats, it would seem the only reason to buy another would be so you could line them all up on your couch tot ake a picture to post to the harmony central guitar forum.

Can a nashville tele sound like a strat?
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A strat can do alot better job of sounding like a tele and a tele can do of sounding like a strat.

One strat is enough for me. I haven't found one that plays or sounds better than the one I have had for the past 30 years.

Chicken pickin' country players prefer teles. Im a blues player and prefer the strat sound. I like the roy bucannan and albert collins tele sound also...but, not enough to buy a tele.
 
jimistone said:
A strat can do alot better job of sounding like a tele and a tele can do of sounding like a strat.
Click to expand...

Ok. No point of discussing further. The Great State of Mississippi has declared the Stratocaster superior to the Telecaster. Please stand by for further instructions where to drop off your teles for disposal.

I don't know if it was short attention span or reading comprehension, but the discussion was which costs more to make, a strat or a tele, since they cost exactly the same retail.

Insurance man, you're a captain of industry and love money. I'm interested in your opnion on the subject.
 
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