This is my Telecaster I built from parts I got from a variety of places. The alder body I got from Ebay, including the jackplate, neckplate, control plate, and bridge. The neck was given to me by my friend Jason from a Squire Telecaster he was parting out. The bridge pickup is a GFS "Guitar Fetish" Fatbody Overwound, the neck pickup is a Rio Grande VTTN Vintage Tall Boy Classic, reverse wound. Both pickups have Alnico magnets. I put some vintage Fender style tuners on it I got from my friend Kerry. The body came with a crappy hacked up white pickguard but I wanted a tortoise shell pickguard anyway and purchased one of those. Let's see, what else? Oh yeah, Shaller Strap Locks.
My design goals were:
Sunburst body, rosewood neck.
Hot pickup in the bridge position.
Vintage pickup in the neck position
Volume pot, no Tone pot.
Reversed Control Plate.
Years ago I knew a guy that had a vintage sunburst Tele with a rosewood neck and have always liked them. Plus, I thought it would make a nice pair-up with my Start, which also has a hot pickup in the bridge position. I had acquired the neck, body, and some of the parts but had to shelf the project for several months due to job loss. When I got working again I finished it up with the help of my friend Kerry.
I used steel wool to rub out the Fender decal on the headstock and re-lacquered it. I purchased the rest of the parts and did basic assembly of the guitar. Then I took it to Kerry did a basic setup, then I did all the wiring.
Back to Kerry to fine tune the setup. It played very nice, but a problem came up: I play real loud, with amps cranked hard, and when I did that with this guitar I got a lot of feedback from both pickups. The GFS pickup was supposed to be wax potted, and the Rio Grande wasn't potted at all, so I wax potted both of them anyway. I had never done that before but it wasn't hard, instructions to pot pickups are all over the Internet. I also spread a thin layer of wax underneath the bridge, a suggestion from Lindy Fralin. That fixed the feedback problem.
By the time I got done with it I had a pretty good guitar. The neck is rock solid. It has stock Fender frets and I wouldn't mind having frets that are a little larger but that's no big deal. The pickups sound very good; the GFS really rocks and the Rio Grande gives that vintage wail. Recently I even played it in a country band for a short time, helping them out because they needed a lead player.
