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My new body was shipped Monday: chambered mahogany body with curly maple top and one 'f' hole - wil have a single Vintage Vibe HCC in the neck postition. Should be the perfect 'jazz' Tele. Pics to follow when it gets here next week. Still thinking of how to finish it - I like shellac with a little Trans Tint amber usually - any other suggestions from you builders out there? Don't want to use nitro as I don't have the patience to wait for it to dry and I've never had good luck with Tru Oil - I know a lot of folks swear by it but it always gums up on me. Anybody used Danish Oil?
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11-12-2014 01:16 PM
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What will be your neck dimensions Skip?
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I got it a couple years back on E-Bay from a guy called Mammoth Guitars in CA (got it cheap, too) It's nice curly maple with matching fretboard. Originally had the 22nd fret overhang which I removed. The thing I like about it is that the nut is 1-3/4" and the radius is 16". I came up playing those Gretsch 'neo classic' fingerboards, so it's real comfortable for me, plus, it's closer to the 1-7/8" nut on my Cordoba GK Studio classical guitar which I play a lot. Depending on how things go, I may have Warmoth or someone build me the same neck specs with an ebony fretboard and a Strat headstock just to have something different.
Originally Posted by KEOKI
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I don't think you can go wrong with Warmoth...the neck they built for my tele is just fantastic...
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Warmoth and USACG are the two to beat. I think they're located in the same town, too. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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Originally Posted by BigDaddyLoveHandles
Yeah, I had them build me a similar one a few years ago and it was great. Should have kept it when I sold the guitar. The guy who built my body (Guitars by Augustus in Oklahoma City) has an outrageously flamed neck on his FB page - I might check with him - he's getting a real good reputation but I think he has a real rock-oriented mindset. He was easy to work with, though. I think the fact that I only wanted a neck PU on a Telecaster sorta unnerved him!
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Yup! Here is my custom designed Telecaster, I designed and assembled. This tele is my work horse and sounds really versatile. The neck is made of roasted 1 piece maple with super jumbo 6100 nickel silver frets. Compound fretboard radius 10-16, compound neck profile as well (V to C 0.880 X 0.950)--its really comfortable to my left hand. The body is from a 90's mexi-tele(basswood), with compensated brass saddles on a custom steel bridge plate. It has a neodymium noiseless pickups with a 4-way switching (series/neck/parallel/bridge) setup. I also wired it vintage cloth 22 gauge wires and an odd 0.036uF NOS russian PIO tone caps.
And ow! The dot inlays, tuning pegs and plate are MOP .
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That, sir, is a thing of beauty!
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Leo's "genius" owed a lot to Paul Bigsby
Leave us not forget that Leo F. apparently got the string head design from Paul Bigsby the guy who did a special guitar for Merle Travis. Apparently, Bigsby, an eccentric type never patented the design. It was shown to Leo, and he saw, took it and copied it, and patented himself, I believe. The story is that Bigsby never spoke to Leo after that.
Bigsby also built one-off steel guitars for top-flite players (they usually have the names imprinted on the cases) that a lot of people think are the best non-pedal steels ever made.
Having said that, I love teles. Stay in tune, wide tonal range, clear tone that is customizable but still retains its essence. Much better than a strat, and let's not mention LP's which to my mind, are just a bad design, that got rescued from obscurity when Jim Marshall accidentally invented the British Sound amp and they turned out to be great for overdriven rock sounds.
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Check this out geezer.. Originally Posted by goldenwave77
As made by T. K. Smith TK Smith
Check out his site. He also does CC pickups, Bigsby styled Aluminium pickups and his own style of tremolo.
TK Smith | The Fretboard Journal: Keepsake magazine for guitar collectors
The ultimate Tele modder!Last edited by jazzbow; 11-13-2014 at 05:44 PM.
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Isn't there this story that the first test drive of a Tele in some street instantly resulted in the gathering of an amazed crowd standing there in awe because they had never heard anyhing like that before?
(I clearly remember reading this story somewhere, but don't hold me liable...)
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TK Smith specializes in old-school/days of yore/can't buy anymore stuff. He's a skilled craftsman, makes everything in his shop, and can play a pretty mean guitar as well. He is THE guy to go to for anything vintage-Bigsby related (and I don't mean the tremolos that come on modern Gretsches)... his little niche is a very specific, american roots/cowboy jazz type of thing.... Merle Travis, Paul Bigsby, Jimmy Rivers, Deke Dickerson (another guy: not "jazz" per se, but american roots/hillbilly jazz/etc).....
It's an interesting "rabbit hole" to go down, and is definitely more interesting to me that what I guess most people would call straight jazz guitar. I love me some Johnny Smith, and a few others, but I'm really more all about Charlie Christian, western swing, rockabilly, early rock-n-roll..... whatever you call the crossroads where all that stuff meets, that's where I'm at.
Sorry for the derail; just wanted to try to spread some awareness about TK Smith and Deke Dickerson....
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You and I think alike! I like Jimmy Rivers a lot, be there doesn't seem to be much of his stuff out there. I like Merle a little over Chet and I play more like a mixture of the tqo. Oh, and don't forget Jimmy Bryant. Originally Posted by ruger9
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How about starting a thread on the 'Players' part of the forum? Originally Posted by ruger9
Not much here on western swing etc, and it would be well smart to have some names and recommendations.
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I'm a big HCoC fan, I even have a wall-hanger guitar that I got Whit Smith to sign many years ago Originally Posted by jazzbow
Whit Smith and David Rawlins are the ones who got me interested in archtop guitar.
Swing IS jazz. And this includes Swing, Western Swing, Gypsy Jazz, etc.
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Eldon would be proud!!! And I'd marry her but my wife won't let me!!
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+1 Swing is jazz. There is, also, a quite "hot" feel to the Western swing playing of the great players of the 40s and 50s. Speedy West and Jimmy Bryant were quite jazzy players in whatever setting they were involved in. Same with Eldon Shamblin and his bunch of rhythm section guys.
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Is this also jazz?
(Sorry for posting this here, but I guess the gear content is certainly worth it...)
And what would to call the playing technique shown in the sequence beginning at around 4:00 minutes?
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Played a gig last night with my new Tele (Lollar pups), and I gotta tell ya, I couldn't have been more pleased with the guitar. I've been using one of my archtops in that band (Swingtown Vipers -- reefer swing) and while they work, there just seemed to be something missing. Last night I found out what it was: articulation. Not that my archtops aren't crisp speakers, they are, but they only have one voice. The Tele let me push the note around (really, neck bending stuff) and the plain 3rd let me be very "vocal" in how I worked a note. Pinch harmonics, string bends, neck bending, pick attack, sustain of the note, behind the nut bends -- basically everything you can do with a Tele that you can't with an archtop. I felt like I was actually speaking with my own voice, unlike what I feel with an archtop :shrug:
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It's called 'showing off for TV", I guess but overall the Merle Travis stuff is generally referred to as 'Kentucky thumbstyle' and comes from a long line of folks like Mose Rager and Ike Everly who all hailed from a small area in KY - it's one of my favorite styles to play and audiences seem to like it. Current players carrying on the tradition are Eddie Pennington and Comer 'Moon' Mullins along with some young folks who have been winning festivals the last few years. Doc Watson (RIP) also played it as good as anyone. If you want to hear it the way it's supposed to be, search You Tube for Eddie Pennington and Comer 'Moon' Mullins - they've got it nailed! I believe Eddie learned from Mose Rager who also taught Merle.
The amazing thing to me is he did it with his thumb and ONE finger, unlike Chet who originally heard him on the radio and tried to copy him and ended up using two fingers and thumb. I can sorta do the one finger thing but I have to think real hard about it - I'd much rather use two! Another difference is that Chet's style is a little more refined, thumbwise - Merle (and the style in general) used what I call a 'heavy thumb' where you're playing multiple bass notes. Great stuff - I've been playing it for going on 50 years and never tire of it.
Back during the folk scare of the 60's, some people started calling any kind of fingerstyle 'Travis picking' but they were totally incorrect - it was an entirely different thing.
BTW, the younger player in this clip is Tom Bresh who is Merle's son and great player in his own right.
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Thanks Skip! Learned a lot from your post
OK, that explains a lot, of course. Originally Posted by Skip Ellis
BTW, what made me look up Merle Travis was the Guild connection, i.e. I noticed him showing up repeatedly in Hans Moust's "Guild Guitar Book" I recently ordered on someone's recommendation here.
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I don't think he really played it much - he just had his picture taken with it. I believe I did see one video of him playing the thing - I also believe it was on an album cover. Great stuff, though!!! Originally Posted by palindrome
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One finger rasgueo?
Great stuff. Although the "aw shucks, I just pick a little geetar" act makes me wanna backhand both of 'em
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Yeah - never cared for that approach, but I guess it went over with some audiences. What's hard is those rolls - he drags his thumb across 2 or 3 strings and finishes up with a finger! It ain't easy - believe me. Go on You Tube and look up a song called 'Rock-a-Bye Rag' - I don't think there's one of him playing it but there's a couple guys with flat tops who tear it up. I'll see if I can post the link.
Last edited by Skip Ellis; 11-14-2014 at 09:07 PM. Reason: Add link
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Probably should read all 81 post but. Jazz and teles? Ed Bickhert. Need I say more? I own a tele and I play boxes as a rule. But nothing sounds like a tele and every time I hear Bickhert or Frisell. I break mine out. Usually that last a week or so until I remember that 25.5 scale is real.
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