12/30/2024
You might find this personal project interesting. The slab for this guitar is a piece of 150 year old emerald poplar. I'm lucky in my friends. I "know a guy." He has acres of air and kiln dried wood, some of it you can't get anywhere else, because it simply no longer grows anywhere on this planet. Anyway, the slab sat in a corner of my workshop on the floor for years. I started working on it, but didn't get any further than cutting it and adding the contours, neck route and tummy cut. Then it sat...and sat....AND sat some more. I was just too busy at the time working on other peoples' projects. After a few years of this I was so busy doing repairs, I didn't even have time to build anymore. Additionally, I developed severe arthritis in both thumbs. My wood working days were over...or so I thought. Then my oldest boy asked if I'd do a Tele for him. I happened to have a slab of swamp ash lying around the shop, so I said sure. Completing his project really put a fire in the ol' belly. I had forgotten how much I love wood working. And I figured out some work-arounds in the process, so I can (you know) do the thing. Next that ol' timer sitting on the shop floor started calling my name. I decided to finish it. Purists will balk and say it's not a Tele. Perhaps they're right. But I can tell you one thing for sure: This thing is the balls lol. To tell you a little bit about the build. I started by finishing the routing for the pickups and control array. Next, I torched the slab black, and then aggressively removed the char with a wire brush (a technique I learned from my father who also loved wood working). After this, I treated the slab with Tru-oil. The neck is Wenge with abalone fret dots and super jumbo EVO fret wire. This isn't the Stew Mac gold fret wire, which I'm told is comparable. It's the original super durable alloy that Jescar sourced for many years to make this incredibly durable wire. Why am I making a thing of this? Because you'll likely not need a fret job with this guitar. That's how durable this stuff is. And it feels like butter to play on. Plus I just think it's kind of cool that you can't get this wire anymore. But this guitar has it. (I digress) The radius on the neck is 16/20. Outfitted with thumbwheel locking tuning machines, string changes are a snap and it's ultra stable. The pickups are Seymour Duncan 59 in the neck and JB in the bridge with a push/pull coil split on the tone control. A standard master volume, 3-way toggle, and trifecta bridge round out the gold hardware. If you're wondering what a trifecta bridge is, it's just a bridge that allows you to string your guitar in one of three configurations: thru-body, top-loaded, or hybrid. Lastly the neck joint is sort of an all-access neck design, but not really. Bolt in construction, offset mounting, and an aggressive bevel with an extremely thin heel, make reaching the upper registers on the neck a breeze. Definitely the neck joint is experimental, owing to how thin it is. But don't be fooled; it's rock solid with incredible sonic transfer. The whole thing vibrates like a tuning fork. In short, it's an incredibly unique Tele style guitar. Come get some lol.
