Telecaster Love Thread, No Archtops Allowed

[Buzzz]

Just want to share my experience with my new amp, the Yamaha THR10C. Looked at lots of practice amps for a clean sound w nice reverb and delay, and this amp really stood out. Been using it now for about a month, and pretty much keep it on the "flat" amp setting, with gain at 10:00, trebel and bass at 12:00, chorus at its max, and hall reverb at its max. Through it, my roadworn tele sounds heavenly, and I can assure you it's the setup, not me. Seriously otherworldly.

[Buzzz]

[Buzzz]

[archtopeddy]

Not sure if posted before, but too cool to ignore...

Bill Frisell's 24 3/4" scale Telecaster:
Neck built by JW Black
TK Smith neck pickup and pickguard
Art by Terry Turrell

[neatomic]

yeah barney used a tele when he was doing session work in la...a lot of jazz guys did..tedesco, bain, roberts etc...

howard roberts in studio



when barney k was asked what was the toughest thing about being a studio musician/guitarist?

his classic response-

finding a parking space!

haha

cheers

[Cunamara]

howard roberts in studio

Looks like Howard had the neck modified to flatten the fingerboard radius. Wonder if he used those enormously heavy strings for which he was famed.

[archtopeddy]

Wonder if he used those enormously heavy strings for which he was famed.

Those string ends poking past the tuners sure look fat to me. You can clearly see three or four of 'em! They ain't no Super Slinkys, that's for sure.

[MacGringo]

I got a Tele. A 10 year old US tele American Deluxe. Classic configuration, neck and bridge single coils (noiseless on mine).

I plug it into my Princeton Reverb '65 Reissue

I am a very happy man. It is the ultimate gigging guitar. The neck pickup has such a great sound for jazz with just a touch of roll off. Why did I ever waste my time playing things with f-holes?

Other people are invited to say nice things about Telecasters.

Agree with what you're saying and we can say all we want, but pics are the real proof. :-)

Here's my 8502 and 70s Fender Vibrolux Reverb:

[jazzbow]

Not sure if posted before, but too cool to ignore...

Bill Frisell's 24 3/4" scale Telecaster:
Neck built by JW Black
TK Smith neck pickup and pickguard
Art by Terry Turrell

There's modding for show and then there's modding oh no no no!

The accused...



Currently for sale in the UK on eBay for £250/$325/€284!
Price does not include sneakers.

[omphalopsychos]

Not sure if posted before, but too cool to ignore...

Bill Frisell's 24 3/4" scale Telecaster:
Neck built by JW Black
TK Smith neck pickup and pickguard
Art by Terry Turrell

I effing love the sound of that guitar. It also looks/sounds like Frisell is playing flatwounds for once. I can't wait for my TK pickups and new neck to arrive. I think this nostalgic tone is underrated for modern music. I love the sound of modern harmony through old equipment. Especially with an old Octal tube amp, which enhances the lower harmonics.

[neatomic]

tk smith uses, promotes (& sells) thomastik jazzswing flats..he personally uses the 13's...

cheers

[archtopeddy]

I effing love the sound of that guitar. It also looks/sounds like Frisell is playing flatwounds for once. I can't wait for my TK pickups and new neck to arrive. I think this nostalgic tone is underrated for modern music. I love the sound of modern harmony through old equipment. Especially with an old Octal tube amp, which enhances the lower harmonics.

Frisell makes great use of the 24 3/4 scale neck in this song and flat wounds would be an excellent choice on this guitar. He's also playing through a a Strymon Flint pedal and a Gibson GA-50T amp. The pedal just sounds killer!

I'm jealous you're getting TK pickups! Are you putting them on a Tele and is the new neck you're getting a short scale by chance? Who's making the neck?

[omphalopsychos]

Frisell makes great use of the 24 3/4 scale neck in this song and flat wounds would be an excellent choice on this guitar. He's also playing through a a Strymon Flint pedal and a Gibson GA-50T amp. The pedal just sounds killer!

I'm jealous you're getting TK pickups! Are you putting them on a Tele and is the new neck you're getting a short scale by chance? Who's making the neck?

As you should be! Note that the pickups I'm getting are not his Aluminum cased CAR pickups but his Charlie Christian Style neck pickup (with a Curtis Novak bridge tele-style pup). Supposedly his CC is identical to the CAR but without the casing.

The tele will be a frankenstein of parts. I found a beautiful and tastefully relic'ed (i.e. not extreme like Nash guitars) body from Guitar Mill. I'm getting the neck custom made from Musikraft. It's a dark-roasted maple Snakehead with 12" radius and 1 3/4" nut. The scale is full length. I considered Gibson scale, but I already have some Gibsons!

The body arrived today. I'll post some pics when I get a chance. I also happened to get a new neck for my other tele with standard tele pickups (Lollar 52s). (That neck also a snakehead, but this one is from Warmoth).

[archtopeddy]

The tele will be a frankenstein of parts. I found a beautiful and tastefully relic'ed (i.e. not extreme like Nash guitars) body from Guitar Mill. I'm getting the neck custom made from Musikraft. It's a dark-roasted maple Snakehead with 12" radius and 1 3/4" nut.

Sounds like my kind of Frankenstein Tele! TK Smith CC-pickups, lightly relic'd, and a dark-roast maple Snakehead neck. Too cool! I've only heard good things about Musikraft necks. I look forward to seeing pics and learning more about how you feel about its mojo when it's complete.

[omphalopsychos]

As promised, here are some pics. On the right is my new warmoth snakehead on a MIM tele with lollar pickups. On the left a Guitar Mill relic body in nicotine blonde which will get the TK Charlie Christian setup and a roasted maple snakehead. Also some close ups of the cool finish checking on the Guitar Mill body.

[neatomic]

nice! 5 screw pickguards a must..but get some single slot screws instead of the "modern" phillips!!..a nice "extra" vintage touch



cheers

[dallasblues]

Jimmy Bryant played a Tele. That's all I need to know!

[neatomic]

Jimmy Bryant played a Tele. That's all I need to know!

yeah man..

jimmy bryant was first! tele user.. and he put them on the map

leo brought jimmy b early tele proto-type..to club where jimmy b was playing...jimmy went right up on stage and started playing it..by the time he was done..a legend was born!!..this is true hollywood film type stuff!!!

jimmy bryant!!



cheers

[archtopeddy]

Around the July 4th weekend I picked up a cheap Asian-made lefty Cozart snakehead Tele. It was pretty much wrong in every aspect except for the shape: Thick poly seafoam green, three ply pickguard, black plastic control panel, cheap electronics and icepick-like pickup. But it looked like a fun inexpensive project to noodle with so I got to hacking on it. (As a lefty, you don't get a lot of choices sometimes.)

After sanding, repainting with white primer, adding a slight vintage tint, aging with black tea and brown shoe polish, scraping with x-acto knife and screw driver, tin-snipping my own aluminum control cover, adding relic'd machine heads, neck plate, strap buttons, bridge plate, brass saddles, CTS pots, an orange drop cap, and a Seymour Duncan Alnico II Pro bridge pickup -- the guitar has become a gig-able and fun axe to play.

Of course, all the parts cost as much as the guitar -- and I still hope to add a boatneck Musikraft neck, but what the heck, it was a lot fun. And, other than the seafoam green ones, as far as I know there aren't too many lefty "repro" snakehead Teles around.

So here goes -- posted for your entertainment, sneers and amazement, is a photo of the guitar with the original seafoam version inserted in the corner.

[pants]

Since I finished my Warmoth tele about 6 weeks ago, I have been playing it pretty exclusively. Last night I felt bad for my other guitars, so I decided to play a little on each of them, tune em up, give em some love. They were all wrong. The boatneck tele is so comfy and the Lollar CC sounds so nice that I just wanted to go back... so I did. And today I found myself thinking, "should I sell a couple?"

[Papawooly]

And now for something completely different...

Hollywood Bowl Bench Built Esquires!!

Fender Builds Esquires with Original Bench Boards from the | Reverb

[pants]

And now for something completely different...

Hollywood Bowl Bench Built Esquires!!

Fender Builds Esquires with Original Bench Boards from the | Reverb

Heh. Yeah. I saw that yesterday. I guess it's cool and all, but 12k for an esquire? Not gonna happen.

[sparkhall]

Added a little more classic vibes to my new squier classic vibe custom tele.
Love the guitar and the Lollar CC!Attachment 43755Attachment 43756

Looks fantastic, this is pretty much exactly the mod I am thinking of doing (trying to choose between the CV custom and the CV thinline as a base) so I would love to hear how it sounds. Also how much of a pain was it to do - did you have to enlarge the neck pickup rout in order to fit the CC.

[pants]

Looks fantastic, this is pretty much exactly the mod I am thinking of doing (trying to choose between the CV custom and the CV thinline as a base) so I would love to hear how it sounds. Also how much of a pain was it to do - did you have to enlarge the neck pickup rout in order to fit the CC.

The Lollar cc takes about a p90 size rout, but maybe a touch deeper I think? It'll take some wood removal for sure.

[Greentone]

Went back to roundwounds recently on my Tele. Hadn't played a set of roundwound strings in ages. I wanted to use them, though, for a blues/rock gig I played last month. I just practiced with the Tele a few minutes ago. Generally, I play one of my archtops, acoustically, at home for practice.

Gosh, the Tele is a Bruce Lee arse-whipper with roundwounds on it. It does push me over into more of a Danny Gatton meets John Scofield vibe though.

You know, if we took all of the popular music that involved the Telecaster in some capacity and entombed it in one of the Pharaoh's tombs to be lost from collective consciousness, we'd end up losing about half of all of popular music, I'd guess.