Cor lummey, an electric guitar with no pickups!

Not quite. Washburn's new SBT-12 Tele has a piezo transducer hidden underneath its acoustic style bridge. Aim: to simulate acoustic tonalities, with electric playability, without feedback problems. Result: it works, not as a substitute for the real thing, but as a commendably pokey axe with a sound character all its own.

Smashing for bendy country chops and no pickups to foul up the flailing fingers.

Spec says top-bound body is solid basswood with specially routed acoustic chamber. Reality, and a lightish body, suggest they're right on the second point. As to the first, more likely is a sandwich construction - a sheet on the top and back with stuff in the middle.

Knobs are volume, mid-range boost for more electricky sounds, and tone whose modest roll-off means you can mellow things out without losing the essential tonality. Uses 9V PP3 battery powering.

Neck is comfortably proportioned satin-finish rock maple, with plastic veneer on headstock. Flattish 25½in scale rosewood fingerboard carries 22 frets. Tuning machines are Grover.

Colour choice: blue, white and red metallics. And black. In the shops around £275. Only caution, no saddle adjusters. So let's hope Washburn are consistently accurate in siting the bridge. With light guage strings, intonation fine on sample.

WASHBURN SBT-12 ELECTRIC SIX STRING £275