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| Guitars, left to right: 1986 MIJ Fender Tele, murdered out by owner, 2013 Squier Bullet Tele, murdered out by factory. |
Honestly, I like the look of a maple neck on an all-black body (heavily influenced by Sting's video for "Fortress Around Your Heart" — I should get a black Strat with a big CBS headstock some day) so I've been thinking of getting a maple Squier neck off eBay for it.
I was a little worried, because I've played budget guitars from even decent brands that had issues, and getting a guitar you never touched is somewhat worrisome. The biggest issue I've had is frets that stick out of the side of the neck. But this guitar has none of those issues. As you might guess from the picture, I've played it out once. The humbuckers have higher output than my #1 guitar's single-coils, which means I'm going to have to set up another set of patches to my pedalboard so that the output is about the same.
Right now, it is my "working" guitar, as I'm not liking the stage buzz on my old Tele, I have to work out some issues and maybe get some new pickups for my Hohner Steinberger copy, and my white Tele copy has some fretboard issues above the 12th fret, making it only good for rhythm playing. That means I won't do any mods until I have another guitar fully functional. But, when I get to that point, I have so many ideas for this thing. Since it has a six-saddle bridge, I could easily put on a GraphTech Ghost system and fairly easily switch between acoustic and electric sounds on it. No, wait: Looks like GraphTech now sells 3-barrel Ghost saddles for Teles. They didn't before. Maybe I should put that in my #1? And when I do, switch to Seymour Duncan Hot Rails to up the output?
Or maybe not. I've been thinking of that mod for over a decade. Anyway, eventually I will have the HH set up for volume-tone-switch, like my #1, instead of switch-volume-tone. That's the non-negotiable.
