Who makes the best Telecaster in 2025? Fender vs Jet vs Ibanez vs Paoletti | Comparison & Shootout!

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Today, we’re comparing four excellent modern Fender Telecaster-style guitars – from Jet Guitars, Fender themselves, Ibanez and Paoletti, ranging from $400 to a whopping $4,000+ – to see which is the best Tele around in 2025!

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The best Telecasters at Thomann:
At Sweetwater:
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These four guitars might share the same overall body shape, but they’re very different beasts in many ways – as you might expect, given the price differences.

The $350/€350 Jet JT-350 is the budget offering here, but you get excellent specs on paper: a basswood body – with tummy cut – roasted maple neck and rosewood fingerboard, for starters. Then you get a set of Jet pickups, a Wilkinson bridge, and Jet locking tuners. The 9.5” radius neck is a modern feeling Modern C shape, with a sleek satin feel.

The Fender in today’s comparison is my personal pride and joy: a 2014 Fender FSR Standard Satin Telecaster, made in Mexico, with mods. The guitar, which cost me about €500 back in the day but would probably be around $800/€800 nowadays, features an alder body – covered in a beautiful satin Ocean Blue Candy finish – with a maple neck and rosewood board.

I kept the stock ceramic Fender Tele bridge pickup, but added a The Creamery wide range humbucker in the neck, alongside a three-saddle Wilkinson bridge. I also got a bone nut fitted, but the stock Fender tuners have been rock solid for over 10 years of heavy playing.

Going into the more professional price range and we have the Ibanez Prestige AZS2209H, which is Ibanez’s made-in-Japan take on the Tele, and part of their AZ Series. The AZS features an ash body, alongside a roasted maple neck and fingerboard. The pickups are by Seymour Duncan – with plenty of extra switching options – and the bridge and locking tuners are from Gotoh. The neck has a bone nut and 22 jumbo stainless steel frets, and the fingerboard radius is 12”.

And finally, we have the truly boutique Paoletti Nancy Loft SP90. This €4,200 Italian-made masterpiece is a superlative guitar in every way. It starts with the body, which is 150-year-old aged chestnut wood, in this case covered with a nitro Butterscotch Black over Sunburst finish.

The neck is Canadian roasted maple, and the fingerboard is extra dark Pau Ferro. The pickups (we have a P90 in the neck here) and hardware are Paoletti’s own, apart from the Kluson Deluxe tuners.

Can a Telecaster-type guitar ever be worth this much money? That’s a very good question, and in this video we’re testing the four guitars out against one another to see how they perform.

Here, I play a series of riffs on all four guitars in a variety of different styles, from country, folk and indie, to pop, rock, punk, metal, and more. This lets us really hear the differences and the similarities between them, and hopefully you’ll be able to decide which one would be your top choice!

Let me know which one you prefer in the comments!

Here are some links to the various playing samples and info bits:

00:00 Introduction and what we’re doing today
02:32 Fender Telecaster specs and info
04:45 Jet JT-350 specs and info
06:13 Ibanez AZS2209 specs and info
08:23 Paoletti Nancy Loft SP90 specs and info
11:02 Today’s rig and plan

Quick Timestamps
11:37 Clean tone reference chords on all guitars/pickup settings
13:05 Clean tone samples (folk, country, pop, indie, blues, funk, etc.)
16:30 Indie and alt rock tones
19:56 Classic rock tones
22:04 Hard rock tones
24:09 Alternative rock tones
24:32 Punk rock tones
25:58 Progressive and modern rock tones
26:50 Metal tones

29:33 My thoughts
30:08 Jet JT-350 discussion and opinions
31:04 Fender Tele discussion and opinions
32:49 Ibanez AZS discussion and opinions
33:46 Paoletti discussion and opinions
34:58 Which guitar is best? Which should you buy?

My setup was as follows: I ran the four Teles into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 head, also using my Greer Lightspeed, Marshall 1959 Super Lead and Revv G3 pedals for overdrive and heavy distortion sounds. The amp went from the Red Box DI straight into my Focusrite Scarlett 2i4, which went into Logic Pro X. That's it. No post-processing on the sounds was done.

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Get all this gear at Thomann:
Get all this gear at Sweetwater:
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Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Duck In The Alley – TrackTribe.

#Telecaster #FenderTelecaster #JetGuitars #JetGuitar #CheapGuitars #Ibanez #IbanezGuitars #IbanezAZS #Paoletti #PaolettiGuitar #PaolettiGuitars #RichWordsMusic

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