Do you like the way the guitar sounds? That’s the only thing that really matters. If you’re only a beginner, you’re not playing out, you don’t need a specific sound anyway.

If you’re a beginner, you’re (in my experience) hundreds of hours of playing away from the point where you start worrying about tone. At this point literally any guitar, as long as you are comfortable with the feel of it, will do. Just enjoy playing and enjoy getting better.

The bottom line is if you don’t like how it sounds or feels then return it.

Now if you want advice:

You talk about the “tele sound” a lot. Could you be more specific about what that means to you? Telecasters can basically do any genre, they’re very versatile. I think you’ll be fine if you keep it.

You’re also a beginner. If you’re not playing in a band I don’t think it’ll matter too much which guitar you have. Think of it as learning what you like and don’t like.

You didn’t fuck up.

One more time: You didn’t fuck up.

You’re learning. Your style and sound will evolve. You’ll end up with way more guitars than you think, and you’ll always have the opportunity to grow ,change, and adapt as your gear and taste expands.

Play it, experiment with what it can do and learn to love the imperfections. They give you “your sound”.

I’ve played guitar for 35 years and never really cared about anything like that, so I’d say you’re fine. Your sound is going to be influenced by many more important factors than the style of pickup… the amp, equalization, weight and tension of strings, effects, room acoustics, your playing. Plus the precise sound is something you’d really only need to worry about after you play competently and are recording or playing concerts.

Anyway when I look up this model, that’s just how it’s set up:

Squier Humbucking Telecaster Pickups
Voiced in-house at Fender, these Squier humbucking pickups produce fat, rich tone for a wide variety of styles.

I don’t think you need to be concerned that Fender doesn’t know how to make one of their signature styles of guitar properly or something. Most likely they chose these pickups to make the model versatile.

In summary, I hope you enjoy your new guitar and musical ventures, and I don’t think you have anything to fret about.

The affinity Tele deluxe is a great starter. No need to worry about single coil hum. I remember the neck pickup sounding really good if you raise the pole pieces slightly. I’ve had a lot of fun with mine, modding it and trying different wirings and switches to get a single coil tone out of cheap AliExpress humbuckers I put in. Great for learning if you don’t feel too precious about it.

I agree with everyone saying you didn’t fuck up if you like the sound. At the same time, the main component of a guitar’s sound is the pickups (mainly type, but also position in relation to the strings, how much many loops they have, etc), so your telecaster won’t sound like a classic telecaster, but like a deluxe one.

If you don’t like that you can return it, but then you will be dealing with 60hz him from the single coils, which can be a bit annoying as a beginner.

I don’t think you fucked up. I like humbuckers. You could get different pickups down the road if you want.

Do you like the sound?

thanks for the help guys!

Before changing guitars or pickups, try a different amp. It should cause a big tone difference, perhaps more than the other way around.

@[email protected] teles (usually) have single coil, but if you are a beginner it doesn’t really matter, focus on your technique, timing, etc. and only then worry about guitar models, pickups, etc.

I guess you can get a tele sound from non tele as well as long as you are able to do what you intent to and that means practice

Another thought: do you want an existing sound or do you want to create your own sound? Ultimately, that’s a really key concept. Music is not a competition. You’re not trying to sound like that other guy–you’re not him and you’ll never sound exactly like him. And even if you do, do you really just want to be a duplicate? Your music is like your fingerprint. It will sound different than the music other people are making, simply because you are the one making it. Lean into that and find YOUR sound, not someone else’s.

Having said that, the “tele” sound is primarily a treble-y twangy kinda tinny sound. Here’s a great example. For those types of examples, it’s usually a very compressed tone, often clean or with just a slight touch of OD (e.g. you could just use a tube amp and push it juuuust past clean), and some slap-back/ping-pong delay.

I’d say the real fuck up is spending so much money on a guitar as a beginner.

Maybe you’ll stick with it and it won’t matter but a lot of people end up not sticking with it.

My recommendation to beginners is to buy a cheap guitar. If you find yourself still playing it a year later, then start thinking about upgrading.

Jumping straight into a $3k guitar just doesn’t make sense to me unless the money doesn’t matter. Since you’re a beginner having a top quality instrument isn’t going to matter and you won’t tell the difference. By the time you do know the difference this advice doesn’t matter anymore.