Well I received my Modern Player Thinline Tele today.
What a great guitar! Forget value. Forget MIC vs MIM vs MIA. This is a great guitar. Period.
I was a bit fearful as I opened the box. After all this is a MIC Tele Thinline with a price tag of only $449. How good could one expect it to be at this price correct?
I slipped it out of its plastic bag and the first thing that grabbed my attention was the beautiful 3 tone sunburst finish. Real deep and clear and a beautiful mahogany grain showing through. That and the tinted maple neck looked really stunning.
I inspected the body for finish flaws. This guitar shines like no other guitar I own. Perfectly smooth glass like finish. No ripples wood joins showing. Flawless. Fit and finish, also perfect.
Now it it's time to inspect the neck. I hate this part. I rub my hands across the neck for sharp fret edges. This guitar has got the best fretwork of any guitar I have ever bought. Amazing!. Not even one slightly sharp fret end. Smooth as butter. And what was really impressive is the fret polishing. The frets are so highly polished they just glistened.
I site down the neck for humps, twists etc. Perfect. Action on this guitar is low right out of the box. I then started bending the first and second strings a full step from the 5th fret on up to the 22nd fret. No fret out anywhere. The neck finish is awesome. Super shiny and smooth as glass. The neck is a super comfortable C shape and super comfortable to play.
Time to plug it in.
The P90 pups are nice but IMO not Gibson P90 quality. They are not bad pups. They still have some of that low end growl that you can expect from a good P90 but a little more polite. The top end is nice and clear but doesn't have the fat biting twang that you could expect from a Gibson P90. But as I said they are still nice pups and your opinion may be totally different than mine. I found that they sounded very nice overall though. A 6.5 out of 10 from my rating chart. By the way the intonation was also as good as it gets on my guitar.
As far as ratings go I am giving this guitar an overall 9.5 out of 10 and only because the pups are not my favorites. But I am rating this guitar on quality based on ANY price tag. If it were on value for the dollar it would be any easy 10 out of 10.
This is a great, great guitar and an amazing value.