After-Action Report: Derp!

I was set to play on Sunday. I had all my gear together and set aside, and knowing the show-up time was 6:30pm, I was watching Disney-Pixar shorts on Netflix at 6pm when I got a text.

<you're showing up, right?>

<yeah, getting ready to show up at 6:30>

<that's when we start playing>

So there was a lot of Derp!, a hasty loading of the car, the slightest of soundchecks, and, despite all that, a reasonably decent gig. I knew the songs, mostly, so I didn't embarrass myself too much.

I did some, though. The first is the partscaster you see to your right. Despite the pots you see sticking through the control plate, it has no controls. It's pickup-to-jack. It's a partscaster, built from a factory second body from Guitar Fetish, a $5 bridge pickup from Reverb mounted to the body, and a neck salvaged from my son's first guitar, a First Act instrument where the body broke near the tremolo bridge mount. It's proudly a mongrel, and I've enjoyed it as a bedroom guitar.

But I rarely plug in my bedroom guitars, and I found while playing it, in front of people with only the most minimal of soundchecks, that the ringing highs I love while playing it unplugged turned into a shrill icepick when going through my pedalboard and the venue's amp. I generally tilt my pickups a little toward the high strings, in order to balance string volume. Plugging into my Frontman 25R with knobs at 12 o'clock, I went in with a screwdriver and reversed that. We'll see next practice how that goes.

A key part of my pedalboard is the volume pedal. I love to swell in, working with my delay pedal to get a keyboard pad effect. But, they've been having problems with hum, and so there's a noise gate on the amp mic. Which means I pick quietly and get nothing, and I pick louder and I get a surprising pop from out of nowhere. I've talked to the sound guy, and next time, I'll have time to get that worked out better.

Pete Townshend played a Telecaster

I suppose you can call that "playing".

My New Toy

I got a $35 Factory Clearance body and a bridge from GuitarFetish.

I got an $8 Squier Tele pickup from Reverb.

The neck came from a First Act mongrel (Gibson-style 3-per-side headstock, Tele body, Strat pocket, tremolo bridge and controls, single bridge humbucker pickup) that self-destructed years ago.

Nut is from another guitar, but really fits neither, so I have a capo on the first fret, making it effectively a zero-fret guitar.

I took the control plate, jack, and strap buttons from other projects, mostly hardware replaced on other guitars. I lost my old jack cup, so black duct tape is serving.

And, for now, it has no electronics besides a pickup and a jack, yet I still reversed the control plate, because that's how I roll. I'm torn between volume-only ("EVH"), volume w/ push-pull or push-push kill switch, volume/tone/kill, old Esquire wiring, Eldred "cocked-wah" wiring and leaving it just like this. I have a wiring harness I might stick in and leave alone, just to be like that.

Because is is a cheap factory reject body (and I still need to work on it to get the neck sitting right, so the high E stays on the neck), I feel free to modify the body in any way I feel like. I have vague plans of carving cool stuff into it with a laser cutter, and I've recently been inspired by the art on Johnny Hickman's "Lucky 7" Les Paul, but looking good pales in comparison to playing good, so that can wait. And I'm thinking about getting another, Tele-style neck, but honestly, I like the way this neck feels.

My #1, besides my #1, is called "Johnny" because it was signed by John 5. My white Tele-style was signed by Bill Kirchen, so I call it "Bill". My dual-humbucker Bullet Tele has yet to be named, and the same with this one. Over time, it'll reveal a personality and receive a name.

I'll set up a camera and play something with it soon. Last time, the mic was close and the amp was far, so you only got the acoustic sound. I'll move an amp closer, or maybe DI it, and try again.

Have to credit the new image

That guitar is an x-ray of a 64 Tele reissue, part of Project X-Ray, getting a deeper picture into classic guitars. It really shows how bear-bones the thing is. There's also shots of some harp guitars, guitars made by C.F. Martin and Orville Gibson, and some golden-era Gibson's and Martins. The project started to see if there's a difference between the Gibson instruments built pre-WWII and those built by the "Kalamazoo Gals" during the war. Check it out!

NGD Squier Bullet HH Tele

Guitars, left to right:
1986 MIJ Fender Tele, murdered out by owner,
2013 Squier Bullet Tele, murdered out by factory.

I saw a deal on Musician's Friend and couldn't resist. It's a Squier Bullet Telecaster HH Blackout FSR and cost me $150. I was getting a new gig bag (seen in the background) and could not resist.

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.

Shiny!

Totally metal! I love the tone for shred, for blues and fingerstyle. Santa! I'll be good the rest of the year!

While I don't like the guy's potty mouth, I do like his very sitar-like fretless Tele.

Don't let the video title fool you, it isn't a Fender guitar, much less Fender Custom Shop guitar. Plus, Yakkety Sax.

"You Were Probably Going To Mod It Anyway"

So, I was on TDPRI, looking around, and someone posted that he was thinking about getting an Esquire.

An Esquire is in essence a Telecaster with no neck pickup. It was wired with three setting: a bassy setting to cover the the low-end (not really a common position), a standard volume-and-tone setting, and one where you bypass the tone knob and go right to the jack. This is a bit of a hot-rod wiring.

My suggestion was to get a Squier Classic Vibe '50s Tele and mod it, because TDPRI is all over these things as being very good early Tele repros for not much money, so you can get solid standard hardware and change what you want.

I'm not really in the market for that, but I'm always curious, so I started searching and saw this:

Sweetwater created the FENDER® Sweet-Mod Classic Vibe '50s Telecaster® to give you a hot-rodded Fender experience right out of the case. We start with the tried-and-true Fender Classic Vibe '50s Telecaster®, supercharged with DiMarzio Area T stacked humbucking pickups for big, fat, aggressive tone. You get the iconic look and feel of the Classic Vibe '50s Telecaster, with a seriously upgraded sound courtesy of Sweetwater's factory-authorized guitar workshop. You were probably going to do these modifications anyway, and our expert guitar techs have already done the work - for less than your local guitar tech would likely charge. No other retailer has the Fender Sweet-Mod Classic Vibe '50s Telecaster, and it's made to pack an amazing sonic punch. 

"You were probably going to do it anyway."

There's a number of different choices. Teles get either Fender Noiseless or DiMarzio Area Ts. (Stratoblogster can tell you the Strat options. That's his job!) No Esquire options (because you'd have to swap out the pickguard, too, I think). I must say, I'm wanting.

Choisir le Poulet

iowa91 is a picker from just outside Paris (and not Paris, Texas), and she certainly has some licks down. 

Vegas, Baby! Or, Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago

This is a Fender FSR Classic Series '72Telecaster Deluxe in Vegas Flake, as seen in Chicago Music Exchange. It wanted to come home with me, but alas, it had to stay.

They also have a Supro 8-string lap steel that's a dead ringer for my 6-string (on the table in this post). And a  James Trussart SteelCaster in rasta colors and a number of surprisingly affordable Squier Jazzmasters which don't seem to be on the site. And the B-Bender, and an FSR Black Paisley Tele, and so many others.

Chicago Music Exchange is one of the cooler guitar stores I've ever been in.

The Thing That Should Not Vee

This is why I love Premier Guitar! As is clear, it is a guitar with Telecaster stylings on a guitar with a Flying V body style. It's called the Tee Vee and it's from RS Guitar Works. This one draws from the original blackguard look of 1950s Teles, while the one Premier Guitar reviewed is more drawn from a 1960s Custom Tele, sunburst with a rosewood fretboard.

On TDPRI, the great guitar sparkler Buckocaster once put holographic sparkle on a Tele-V body, but I don't think I ever saw the completed guitar, so this is not quite as original as it seems, but it's a great and wonderful thing.

New Tele Documentary

How could I consider myself a Tele blogster if I didn't cover this?

That's James Burton, Redd Volkaert, Keith Richards, John 5, Sue Foley, Ritchie Kotzen, Albert Lee, Jerry Douglas, Greg Koch, G.E. Smith and Steve Cropper, all talking up the King of electric guitars, the Telecaster. (Kinda sad that Arlen skipped to Gibson, because he wrote the book on the Telecaster. Literally. I'm thinking I should put this on my Christmas list. Thanks, Fender Blog.