(Click on "message seller" if you have thoughts or questions about this guitar... or other music matters?)
I love the tight grained wood and lamination of this Fender model... called "Brown Derby" which is I believe after a style of hat, as you can see depicted to the right of the name in some photos of the head?
My conversion is from a pure acoustic resonator, to become a giggable electric blues guitar with a scalloped edge to the neck to allow more comfortable thumb use on the bass string.
I hope you like the gold and black Marshall amp knobs I used on the guitar?
The principle of this guitar is to promote a metallic flow of signal to be collected by the pickups: the steel strings vibrate on the now metal TOM bridge (it came with a plastic acoustic bridge) bears on the metal resonator front, and that transfers signal into the metal plate of the telecaster pickup and gives a metalic background at higher volume settings.
Obviously the primary magnetic flux is from the steel strings direct to the magnetic pickups, but metallic overtones start to grown with higher volumes and treble boost modes.
The guitar is second hand, but as some people expect everything to be like new: the telecaster head has ding on one edge that I have smoothed out and wax-oiled.
The pickups I have used are a standard telecaster bridge single coil type at the bridge end, though to make it slightly less rinky-dinky I have mounted it slightly further away from the bridge.
The other pickup is a strat neck pickup without the plastic cover.
Keeping it in the Fender mode I wired them in with a Fender Jazz-bass wiring loom... this you might know has a tone common to both pickups, and individual volume controls that allow the signal to flow to the other one if you turn one down... so both up full gives a blend of both pickups, but roll one off a bit and the volume stays the same but the sound changes to the character of the other pickup.
Setting the action is an issue where it is hard to please everyone: pure slide players may want it high so you don't hit the frets... but my favourite slide men like Rory Gallagher and Clapton played slide on guitars that they also played chords and fast lead guitar on as well?
So I have set this somewhere in the middle... which runs the risk of pleasing nobody!
Of course I can influence the action a bit with the truss rod, but the TOM bridge I used is non adjustable, except that the six string saddles are high and have plenty of scope for cutting the grooves deeper to drop the strings lower... but then you cannot go back up again... so measure twice and cut once as the DIY advice goes!
The tuners are what I think of as Gotoh 91 styled ones: where like with Fender basses, you wind round the capstan then poke the end down inside to secure it... they feel good and smooth.
I have strung it up with Ernie Ball tens... meaning .010 to .046, which seem a nice compromise of tone and tension to me.
For us old guys who see the neck as a blur if we don't wear our reading glasses, I have added white enamel braille dots on the fifth, seventh, and twelfth frets, to help you land in the right place!
So here is something fairly unique and interesting, especially for the blues guys out there!
Thanks,
Mark..................