I had built this Tele as a tag along with a previous batch of instruments, it was intended for my use. I brought it along with the batch run to final rub out and then tucked the unfinished guitar in a case and let it "age" for several years. Age sounds better than, "I'm lazy". The photos stink but they're what I have. Speaking of lazy, I realise that the guitar is pretty dusty, sorry about that. I'll tidy up before taking horrible photos next time.
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Nothing special about this guitar except that it weighs under 7lbs. I route out the body prior to lamination and chose my materials for light weight on this guitar. I used mahogany, ebony, quilted big leaf maple and hard maple. The neck is actually a three piece lamination which I pull from a billet, I then re-orient the grain to maximize stability, you would have to know what you are looking for to see this work.
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I like ebony fingerboards for some reason so I used one on this guitar, the ebony also suited the colour scheme to my way of thinking. I make my own fingerboards from lumber that I have squirrelled away. I like the grey streaks althought I know that this is not desirable on a fine acoustic instrument so I used a streaked board on my guitar and let customer's pay for the black blanks. Holy cow, I can now see that this fingerboard is crying out to be oiled, my shame.
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The edge treatment is a simple white/black purfling with a shop made hard maple binding. I don't care for plastic binding so I use wood, customers like this too and this helps me get a bit more money for a guitar.
Sometimes laminations look cheap, this body is a three piece lamination. To make it look attractive I use a dyed swiss pear veneer between the laminations and what would look poopy now looks pretty attractive to my way of thinking. I often carve a relief in the back of my Tele knock offs but this time it was all slab!
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I have been sitting on some pretty nice quilted big leaf maple and I thought I deserved to use it for me. I'm so good to me! This time I wanted to match the peghead to the body so I made a veneer and laminated it to the headstock, it was worth the effort. My brother designed and produced the logo, he's a talented cat, that design is over twenty years old and still looks crisp.
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I have learned to enjoy sanding! I actually like it, especially while working on instruments. Now colour work? When colour hits wood I am in a real state, if I enjoyed it anymore I'd have a stroke right on the spot. This bigleaf really showed its stuff. I use water based aniline dyes applied by hand with a rag to create the vignette. The black is a shop made lacquer which I shoot very dry with a Devilbiss EGA. The clear and sealer coats are nitro shot with an HVLP set up. Holy cow does this gun get the finish on the project without waste! As you can see in this photo, the figure creeps out from under the black when the light level is intense enough. When I have gone to see customers performing on stage the guitars almost look like they are lit from within. The trick is a very dry application of the black moving to opaque at the edges.
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Nothing fancy about the electronics, Fender Vintage pick ups and the ususal wiring. The electronics cavity is shielded as are the wiring routes and the cavity cover is made out of 0.125" black acrylic, also part of the sheilding.
I like the Tele because it is so functional, I will always have one. I do design and build my own guitars and I'll share some of those later once I sort out how to transfer 3X5 transparencies to jpeg.
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