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History:
This VERY COOL little instrument was resurrected from the grave with the most honor I could bestow on it - short of a restoration that would not have been a prudent investment of time & parts researching, considering the hack job performed on it.
We purchased the instrument from the son of the original owner. "Dad" had played it in his day, and "Jr." did the big nasty back in the 70's when it wasn't a crime to do so. It was converted to a single humbucker/volume "rock" guitar, and very badly hacked inside. A string-thru-body bridge was installed in the wrong position for the scale length, and required corrective surgery.
Dating the instrument was difficult due to a complete strip & refinish job - again poorly done. Our research on its fine points of construction was a process of elimination in arriving at its likely date of manufacture in 1958. That research resulted in highlighting the particular body shape, the 22 1/2" scale, "clay dot" inlays, and lack of spacers under the original string trees. These points (and info supplied by the owner) bring us to this conclusion.
The Custom Work:
Starting with plugging the string holes in the body, the bridge was reinstalled in the correct position. A slight cleanup of the previous bad work in the cavity allowed us to do what we wanted with the electronics.
A new pickguard was cut, and Tele pickups selected for the best of Fender tones without trying to cram 3 units in the confined space. The pickups are mounted to the body instead of the pickguard for best response. The master volume & tone controls are tailored for efficiency with no frequency drop-out in the volume control, and focus on the best effective range with the tone circuit. The 4-pole 5-way switch is wired for the usual Tele tones, plus a "blow" position that sends the bridge pickup hot to the jack bypassing the controls, and a "series" mode that puts the pickups into a HUGE sounding humbucking loop. In conjunction with that, the tone control is wired so that when full "up", it mutes the high frequency off the neck coil, leaving the bridge pickup to cover that range. The effect is a strong "Straty' tone that drives distortion settings nicely and sounds great clean as well. When you back the tone down a bit, it releases treble frequencies back to the neck pickup for yet a 6th overall tone. Full ground shielding keeps the operation nice & quiet in all conditions.
This is now a rugged, 100% functional guitar with a cool vibe and great action.
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