Fret King Country Squire Modern Classic - Butterscotch

The Fret-King Country Squire is emblematic of the Fret-King ethos, a friendly and comfortable benchmark, blending the familiar with the contemporary, with innovative, progressive features.

Fret-King is recognised for upending the norm and setting new benchmarks. The uniquely Fret-King Country Squire Modern Classic is an homage to simpler days and showcases just what can be done with the simplest of configurations. Using a just a single Fret-King Tapped-Fifty bridge mounted pickup, with a master tone, Varicoil, custom switching and wiring, the Modern Classic is the most versatile and useable single coil, single pickup guitar on the planet.

The range of attention-grabbing sonic options from this guitar are percussive, responsive, and rich, running all the way from classic early fifties to Western Swing, cool jazz, spikey country tones and a contemporary hot Texas edge.

Country Squire Modern Classic Features

• Body: The two-piece centre jointed body is constructed from selected American alder. The body, with its vintage edge radiuses casts a classic shadow. The unique reduced profile neck joint and subtly extended cutaway offers enhanced upper fret access, and the superb overall balance makes the Modern Classic a pleasure to wear, A solid four bolt neck joint ensures the constructional and mechanical integrity which provides a platform for great sustain and the emblematic tonalities of the Country Squire Modern Classic.
• Headstock: The signature Fret-King headstock ensures perfect balance, classic looks, and great visual appeal.
• Machine Heads: Wilkinson WJ05 machine heads provide quick, accurate, stable tuning.
• Nut: 43mm Graph Tech self-lubricating nut, smooth and friction free.
• Neck: Light oil finished, hard rock Maple with classic ‘soft C’ profile for instant comfort, speed, accuracy, and a luxurious, ‘played in’ feel.
• Fingerboard: Premium hard rock Maple for durability, and outstanding tonal transfer with a 10” radius for a super comfortable, responsive, positive playing feel.
• Scale Length: 25.5" / 648mm.
• Frets: 22 Medium profile hi-durability nickel silver frets ensure accuracy, comfort, and an overall feel.
• Pickups: The custom designed Fret-King Tapped-Fifty tappable overwound single coil bridge pickup, created by Trev Wilkinson, supplemented by Fret-King’s custom wiring, give the single pickup Country Squire Modern Classic an intrinsic purity and an immense range of tonal options.
• Tone Control: Outer control master tone, inner control, Varicoil adds or subtracts additional winds in the Tapped-Fifty bridge pickup.
• Bridge: The unique Wilkinson WTB bridge further enhances the intrinsic tonality of the Modern Classic. Featuring a steel baseplate which surrounds and focusses the magnetic field of the Tapped-Fifty pickup. Adjustable, pre-intonated barrel style natural brass saddles allow spot-on tuning, and two strings per saddle solidly anchor the saddles to the bridge baseplate ensuring the maximum mechanical coupling, so crucial to giving you all the power and tone you need.

Control Functions

The custom wiring and control configuration in the Fret-King Modern Classic takes a sideways look at a ‘50’s classic. The three-way lever switch, mounted on an ergonomically designed switch plate, master volume, master tone and Varicoil extract a huge range of tones from the single Tapped-Fifty pickup.

In position one, the master tone is disengaged, with the push-push switch on the volume control switching in and out custom circuitry which removes the fixed treble control circuitry and introduces two different value capacitors to give two separate warm, lower frequency accented tones. The Varicoil remains in circuit to bring in and out of play additional winds, providing the underlying traditional, or hot tone.

Position two, disengages the push-push feature of the volume control, and engages the master tone control, which along with the Varicoil opens up the Modern Classic to produce anything from a classic ‘50’s tone, with a little additional warmth, all the way to a powerful "Southern Hot" twang.

Position three bypasses the master tone, leaving the Varicoil engaged, for a hotter, louder lead sound with added highs, further enhancing the range of supremely useable tones from this remarkable guitar.