My advice is very much to go out, try as many as you can get your hands on and buy the one you like the most.


You can use pretty much ANY Telecaster for any of the things you've described, so it's all a matter of finding one that feels right to you.


That said, I own a mid-90's Mexican made Telecaster Special. It has a neck humbucker, a five way selector switch (positions one and two are [I think] the humbucker in and out of phase, three is both pickups, four is the bridge pickup with whichever of the humbucker coils cancels its hum and the fifth is just the bridge pickup), a TBX tone control and a "vintage" style six saddle bridge.

Recently, I put a hand-wound, 50's style Tele pickup into the bridge and I've been very happy with the tone I'm getting; it's a very flexible yet unique sounding guitar.

Also, I really like the American set-neck Telecasters; if I had $600 kicking around right now, I'd buy one in a heart beat. Typically, I tend to find that even between two guitars of the exact same model, I like some a lot while others dissapoint me. But in this case, I have yet to play one of these guitars which didn't absolutely stun me.