@Colin Young - yes it surprised me too - I expected an upgrade if anything and was slow to complain but in fairness Fender are now looking at this and I'm very interested to see what they say. We have got to hope this is just a rogue example that didn't get much of a QC inspection for whatever reason but I'll have to see what their take is on this and what they intend to do about it. I don't have the guitar as it is with Fender right now and it's not easy to photograph the fretboard to properly describe how poorly levelled the frets are but the attached gives you an idea and you can probably just make out there's a few frets (7, 12 &13) where the tangs appear bent. Many frets are not properly seated and particularly bad 12 blocks 13. 9 has a nice chip out of it that should have at least been filled? What is really clear is the ridiculous overcut of each fret slot - all of them - I've never seen anything quite so poor and totally agree this is not seen on the MIM's - I had 2 (one standard hardtail and one Special) they were fine.
Anyway, it's with Fender to identify a QC failure or try to explain that this is OK from the Custom Shop....
The narrow and shallow SS frets were a major plus for me - I ain't keen on the tall jumbos that get fitted to a lot of "shredder style" guitars and I definitely prefer SS so they were a major reason I "upgraded" to a USA build - rather ironic as it has turned out.
It's a great guitar design but as always the FR can be a bit tricky to setup (mine set to dive only and doesn't float) but I already have one of those trem blocks in the post (
@Andy Eagle) for a recent other FR equipped purchase - good inexpensive way to stabilize if you don't need to pull up.
View attachment 109330