The Internet Has Thoughts About Premier Guitar's Fender 75th Anniversary Ultra II Telecaster Review.
Premier Guitar gave it 4.9 and noted, in the same review, that Fender already lists it as sold out. Nobody reading it could buy one, and nobody who owns one has written about it.
Two sides. One page.
Johnny argues the piece. Then he argues against himself. Somebody has to check his work. Read both, then call the winner below.
The take is shown below.
Source
“It's a spectacular-looking, great-sounding, and smooth-playing instrument”
What the internet actually said
“The body contours are so much more comfortable than any slab-sided Tele.”
“For heavier use, I always found the slab body introduced a comfort issue.”
“Great clean tones (very important), comfortable to play, extremely solid, sweet with some gain.”
The Suede Read
Premier Guitar scored the $2,999 75th Anniversary American Ultra II Telecaster 4.9 — extroverted looks, tones spanning traditional Tele and beefier fare, perfect playability. The single con was that the bridge pickup in parallel mode might be too thin for some players. The review also records, in its own text, that Fender already listed the limited edition as sold out at the time of writing.
So there are no owner receipts on this guitar, and there won't be a meaningful set of them. A 4.9 published after the last one is gone is not consumer advice. It is a commemorative plaque.
What can be checked is the platform underneath it. On Reverb the standard American Ultra II Telecaster has four owner reviews, all five stars — a small sample, and worth saying so. They converge on one thing, and it is not the finish or the switching. A longtime Tele player says the body contours are far more comfortable than any slab-sided Tele, and argues the Ultra II neck joint should be standard on every modern Fender. Another came to it precisely because the traditional slab body introduced a comfort issue. A third lists great clean tones, comfortable to play, extremely solid.
Premier Guitar's playability claim survives, then, by proxy: the ergonomics are the real story and owners of the base model say so unprompted. The verdict on the guitar actually reviewed stays unfalsifiable, because Fender sold them all before the scorecard printed.
Spotted something the press fluffed? info@suedeai.org
Reviewing a sold-out limited edition is a service, not a failure. Some readers want to know what the anniversary model was, and the review told them, disclosure included.
The complaint here is that a review arrived after the guitar sold out, as though Premier Guitar controls Fender's allocation. Limited runs sell out on announcement now; that is the market, not the masthead. And the review disclosed it in its own text — the column's central damning fact is a line the magazine volunteered. You cannot indict someone for the evidence they handed you. A publication that hid the sold-out status would deserve the split verdict. This one printed it.
There is also a real readership for coverage of instruments you cannot buy. People who own the standard Ultra II want to know what the anniversary spec changed. People shopping the used market in two years want a contemporaneous account. Historical record is a legitimate function of a magazine, and 'nobody can act on this purchase today' is not the only test of whether a review was worth writing.
Then note what the column actually established: it went looking for owners of the platform and found four out of four calling it five stars, converging on exactly the playability claim the review made. By the post's own account the magazine's central assertion checked out everywhere it could be checked. That is a press-was-right with an availability footnote. Filing it as split lets a scheduling grievance outweigh the evidence, and the column knows it, which is why the last paragraph has to reach for the word unfalsifiable to keep the charge alive.