I bought one when I joined a country band in the 90’s.
It had a little damage to it since I was the lead singer I usually played acoustic guitar on stage.
I would place the telecaster on stand behind me and then here and there, when I might have had a couple beers, I would accidentally knock it over.
So it had damage to the frets and had trouble staying in tune.
So a couple years ago I replaced the entire neck, put on some of the Fender locking tuners and replaced the modern bridge with a vintage bridge to give it more of a retro look.
I still rarely play the electric guitar but I’m really attached to this old thing.
I’m away this weekend but will post some over the next few days when I’m back home. I am a guitar whore with a bunch of Gibsons and Fenders and guitars from other brands too (Charvel, Hamer, Suhr, Carvin, PRS).
That’s a sweet Tele you posted. Teles are awesome.
I love Charvel - I have 2 of their Mexican made models and they are among my absolute favorite guitars. Perfect necks, play and sound great and stay in tune. Both of mine are hard tails. I’m not a floyd rose fan.
I build guitars. I have quite a few. here’s a “strat” I just finished.
Colour change paint gold - green
high end gold hardware
bourns 250K pot
Seymour Duncan Nazgul pickup
wenge wood neck (this thing is insanely beautiful)
wraparound bridge (not through body)
hollow-body under the entire pickguard.
I gouged the body installing the bridge, because thats life lol.
this thing looks like a strat but sounds like a hollowbody SG or 335.
That’s awesome. I’ve thought about building or having someone build me a “Fender SG” many times. Mahogany strat body, mahogany neck with 24.75” scale, 12” radius, rosewood fingerboard, with a hard tail bridge and 2 humbuckers. I think it would bridge the gap nicely between a strat and SG.
I love the overall concept of an SG but they just feel funny to me (with the neck shifted left feel) and seem to be more temperamental with tuning stability than other guitars. I think my Strat/SG hybrid would be just about perfect.
flame maple neck
faded seafoam pink (the relicing took forever but was fun)
again, all high end gold hardware
CTS 500k pots / orange caps
Cavalier Pickups (the best pickups in the world, made by a solo dude in his garage in NJ)
sounds cranky like a tele but beefy as fuck like the fattest strat youve ever heard. because of the Cavalier pickups.
ya I didnt intend it to sound so much like an SG but here we are haha. my main thought was “what would a wraparound bridge sound like on a fender” and went from there. I had the colour scheme in my head and was dead set on using a wngewood neck. so here we are haha.
I also hollowed out the body quite a bit becuase I was set on only having the one pickup and knob. so I had two more humbucker spaces for the middle and neck positions. so I dug those out more and got carried away lol.
It’s a Canadian made Art and Luthrie I’ve had for more than 20 years. I was gonna get a Martin D-28 as a divorce gift to myself but I got a new Mustang GT instead.
that gouge on the strat above ruined my year. I was devastated. months of work down the drain so to speak. like its still a beauty and plays perfect but that gouge haunts me daily.
never work on your guitar with a cat around or while youre drinking.
Ive fucked up so many guitars and wanted to blow my brains out lol. its a learning process haha.
I get it; I dropped my favorite telecaster one time and took a big chunk out of the paint. Pissed me off to no end, but now I just look at it like a character mark. Still plays and sounds great!
if youre gonna dabble in building your own, I suggest going onto facebook marketplace and buy a piece of shit for $200. take it home and completely take it apart and then put it back together.
then once you get the hang of that go buy your custom parts online and have at it brotha!
its odd because all of my guitars Im super gentle with, except courtney. she gets banged around and beaten up. shes my main gigging rig and the guitar I play 90% of the time. I give zero fucks if she takes a pounding. but any of my other guitars I treat it like an infant fell on the ground lol.
Nothing wrong with a Mexican Fender. My Mexican Strat is very very close to my American Strat and both are stock. Both are awesome and play and sound like strats.
That makes sense. I think there’s probably more consistency with the Americans, so you’re more likely to get a good one if you buy site unseen. If you run the racks you can get kick ass Mexicans though.
Both of mine are a lot older too (late 90s to 2007ish) so I don’t know if the newer Mexican ones are as good as the ones from that era.
You can swap pick ups and hardware on electrics pretty easily to get different sounds. Just gotta track wires and do some basic soldering. Had a buddy who had a beater that he would test run different pick ups on.
