Nacho Guitars 2018 50s Relic (59-Style PAFs)

When it comes to vintage guitars, there's one name you can't get past: Nacho Baños. He wrote The Blackguard Book, the standard work on the early Fender Telecasters and, among collectors, simply the bible. Spend years studying original instruments closely enough to write a reference work about them and you end up knowing more about these guitars than most manufacturers.

That knowledge goes into his own instruments, and the result is one of the few sets of recreations that give even hardened vintage people pause. Nacho works with old timber, historically correct methods and ageing that doesn't look imitated but simply real. With him the ageing isn't a surface treatment but the last step in a build process aimed at that result from the beginning.

This 2018 example follows the 1950s shape language but carries 59-style PAF humbuckers, and that's a combination with a particular appeal. You get the slim, direct ergonomics and dry response of the early solidbodies alongside the warm, woody and dynamic voice of the early humbuckers. These PAFs are moderately wound, so there's no output madness — instead they react very finely to your picking hand and open up as you roll the volume back, rather than closing down.

At the neck you get that round, vocal tone with plenty of substance; at the bridge it turns wiry and cutting without ever going sharp. Pushed, it produces the creamy saturation PAF-loaded guitars are loved for, and clean there's enough transparency left that every chord keeps its shape.

Then there's the playability. Nacho builds instruments for musicians, not for display cases. The fretwork sits, the setup is right, and the instrument has that played-in feel you'd normally need decades for.

A handmade gem from one of the most sought-after vintage specialists in the world. Versions like this are very hard to come by, as Nacho Guitars mostly build the traditional variants, so Ede had to move quickly to secure it for his Private Stock.