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The Accidental Telecaster

ewhip17

New member
Joined
Sep 21, 2016
Messages
86
So at some point a while back I thought it would be great to have a bigger neck for a '63 reissue Telecaster that I have. It's a good guitar but the neck is pretty thin. Started poking around on some sites and one day a very cool relic neck shows up with a big ol' '51 U shape. Sold!! I loved it..... until it arrived and I realized that in my haste to snap it up I didn't notice that it has this offset bolt pattern that Fender is doing on these "postmodern" guitars. Totally my mistake. So I considered sending it back, but I really liked the neck. I also considered trying to drill a new hole to make it fit the standard bolt pattern on the '63ri but the combination of power tools, expensive guitar parts and my skill level is a recipe for disaster.

So then it occurred to me - I've always kinda wanted to build a parts-o-caster. Thought it might be fun. As you can imagine, it's turned into a bit of a money pit and ended up being much more work than I anticipated. BUT, I do really like what I ended up with.

It's not completely done yet. I need to ground the bridge (soldering is not my specialty either... man, I'm worthless apparently haha) and I used one of those Obsidian Wire plug and play wiring harnesses in it and I'm not totally sold on that thing yet. It seems to lack some of the dynamics of standard wiring - it's kind of an on and off thing with the volume and tone and it lacks a bit of character. We'll see though. May swap that out.

Anyway, parts are a Fender relic neck, Fender relic body, Creamtone aged tuners, Fralin Blues Special pickups and a bunch of Callaham hardware. It plays great and really rings. A whole lot of fun and once I get the wiring bits settled I think it's going to be a great guitar. Thought some of you fine folks might appreciate the pics and the story!






 

Red Baron

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 14, 2004
Messages
6,774
Nice to find a Nocaster U neck with a rosewood board, it sure looks killer so hopefully it becomes your #1 :hank
 
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