Wire & Wood:Repairing & Building Electric Guitars: Joel's Tele-blaster

Local musician, guitar geek extraordinaire, and tube amp connoisseur Joel D. asked me to help hot rod his MIM telecaster. When we first met up to discuss the project the guitar was pretty heavily played and was ready for a strip down and re-do. Joel wanted a fatter, more versatile tone, and a few other neat appointments and repairs to put this axe back front and center in his gig arsenal. Joel plays a variety of cover music and original tunes and wanted this tele to be a one stop shop if he needed it to be... and he wanted a humbucker in the bridge position. Rad.

First I stripped this guitar down to just the body and mapped out where the humbucker would fit at the bridge position. Then I routed the body, leaving as much wood as possible. We discussed screwing the pickup directly to the body and using a shorter bridge plate like the Fender G E Smith Tele. Compensated brass saddles seemed appropriate so the intonation would work and we would still have some vintage mojo. Mr. D is not a fan of the typical fender blade switch so I drilled in a gibson style toggle in the tele plate. This turned out even better than I had hoped and really works well. For that all-out rock tone I suggested a Seymour Duncan JB humbucker. Neck pickup stayed stock. The tone knob was re-wired as a coil roll-off knob so we can get humbucker and single coil tones (or anywhere in between) at the bridge position. Also filed and dressed the fret ends as they stuck out past the edge of the fretboard.String it up and set it up and I'm done.

I was really surprised at the range of tones you can get with this simple control setup. 2 knobs and a 3 way switch... its really quite cool. Joel was instantly smitten and has been using it live with his band, The Super Magic Robots. He was stoked. Check out his blog at http://weareastronauts.blogspot.com/ for some awesome guitarry stuff and if you are in St. Louis go see the Super Magic Robots... Joel kills it nightly...