"WHILE THE NEW FENDER Master Series Esprit and Flame guitars bear a superficial resemblance to other popular electrics, closer examination reveals a myriad of subtle detail refinements."

So opens the accompanying catalogue to these two Fenders. Behind the elegant rhetoric is the fact that they were designed by Dan Smith, the gentleman who once masterminded Yamaha's electrics, including the classic SG range. Not surprising, then, that the Esprit and Flame boast the same genes in their makeup. Could Yamaha be the 'popular electrics' to which Fender refer? Hush our mouths.

Neither the double cutaway Flame nor Esprit feel or look anything like a Strat. That's the first lesson. They're Japanese-built, American-designed, humbucking guitars with 24¾in scale necks bonded almost heelessly (notable Yammy influence) to quasi-solid bodies. The last bit's mine. Fender actually call them 'tone-chambered bodies', adding that there are "strategically shaped and positioned hollow channels carved in the body... that allow the instrument to breathe, increasing resonance and sustain and producing a fuller, rounder tone."

Both instruments feature newly designed pickups and electronics, something Fender have dubbed 'TBX' — none of us have been able to figure out what the initials mean, other than obeying the law that anything to do with electricity has to have an X in it somewhere.

The two TBX tone controls are dual direction pots with a centre-off position at 5. Turned anti-clockwise they act as normal tone controls; turned clockwise they bolster the middle and top end of the sound supposedly recreating the resonance of a single coil pickup. It's a simple circuit — two resistors and a capacitor — and needs no batteries. It also works remarkably well, coming a lot closer to the peaky ring of a single coil than a mere tapped humbucker can normally manage.

The pickups are fairly bullish in their plain, black plastic body and surround, and the bridge (taking some tips from Gibson's original Tune-O-Matic) is matchingly straightforward — a tray of saddles adjusted overall for height by two wheels under the bridge. The saddles themselves are unusual, each having a roller in place of the standard 'wedge'. This is doubtless to shake hands smoothly with the fine-tuning tail piece — a now familiar arrangement of miniature jaws gripping the ball ends of the strings that can be tweaked backwards or forwards by tiny amounts, motivated by small, knurled knobs angled downwards atop the tailpiece. Nine out of ten for this bit — graceful, magical, fine-tuning; impossible to do without once you've tried a guitar blessed by such a device. Fender's fail to get the full bonus points because if you loosen the tuners too far they unscrew altogether, drop on to the floor and vanish, disastrously.

The Esprit and Flame come in three levels — ultra, elite and standard (the latter managing without the splittable coils). We had an elite Esprit (Frost White) and an ultra Flame (Candy Green Burst) which was first onto the lap. A slim, generously wide and flat neck say to our fingers, 'Dan Smith' and we hear their message. Preferred this swift, ebony fretboard with its Mother-of-Pearl block inlays to the Esprit's drier, rosewood version. The 22 frets are quite tall, prominent (a definite presence as you slide the hand up the neck) and well rounded — no filed down tops.

On their own the humbuckers are soft and furry, and benefit from that tweak on the TBX to slide in an extra edge of bite. When the coils are tapped they immediately become cleaner, sharper and slightly more metallic, as you'd expect, but it's not until you TBX the outputs you realise they still have some way to go reach the peakiness of purpose-built, single coils. Both neck and tail pickups become gutsier and richer in the middle harmonics — the pickup equivalent of starting to overload your amp so the sound grows on the inside.

On the Esprit the effect wasn't quite so marked, perhaps because the body is fractionally weightier and bulkier, or maybe due to the neck itself, undoubtedly fuller and rounder compared with the Flame... more for the 'thumb-round-the-edge' merchant.

One criticism levelled at both instruments — in the face of all the tone chamber chatter — was the short sustain, especially around the upper end of the neck when the strings were bent.

These be good guitars (though the Flame is by far the favourite) with bright, classy ideas well executed by an obviously immensely experienced guitar designer. That describes the flavour behind them, but these are instruments built in Japan and there is just a touch of the machine to them in their construction and performance. Even so, definitely one of the better humbucker/single coil hybrids to have sneaked along in a while. But very expensive.

FENDER
ultra flame: £820
elite esprit: £830

Contact: CBS/Fender, (Contact Details).