From the Home of Tone bench
Glen's Gibson scale Tele
I had the pleasure of carrying out the final assembly of a really cool project, a 24.75" scale Tele partscaster for Glen. He had sourced a body from Guitar Build (in the UK) and the 24.75" scale 'conversion' neck from Warmoth in the USA, some of the hardware such as a control plate with the angled switch slot, a nice modern 6 saddle Gotoh bridge, the Fender/Gotoh vintage tuners and a lovely matte black pickguard from friends at Armstrong Music. I was asked to carry out the final assembly, and whilst we had a bit of time on our hands whilst the neck was on order from the US, and Glen carrying out the painting work himself on the body, we chatted about some of the final details like pickups and wiring decisions. Which I'll of course share in this article.
A custom left handed Delonge spec Strat project
I was contacted last year, as to whether left handed versions of the Tom Delonge signature Stratocaster were readily available. Which of course the answer, was sadly, no. Fender haven't put out a lefty version of this popular pop punk signature guitar, which is a shame really. Although I'm sure the LH guitar playing community is well used to this exclusion from popular RH production models.
I suggested to the inquiring customer the various ways you could capture the idea, through a mod project, refinishing and customising an existing guitar, via a luthier brand for a custom build or a partscaster too. After a bit of discussion, the customer asked if I could quote on a quality, as close to spec partscaster version and we went ahead with the project. My brief essentially was to capture absolutely as many details from the modern production of the Fender instrument, but of course, left handed.
An awesome Ferrari Yellow Super Strat for Ryan!
I won't go into lots of detail of each step of the assembly, as I've covered a lot of the same kinds of things a number of times on the blog via other partscaster builds. But I'll share the photos nonetheless.
Very much an EVH inspired build, featuring some wicked parts, some of which I was lucky enough to supply as well as install, such as numerous Gotoh hardware items, the Vega-Trem bridge, Tesi Switch kill switch button and all of the wiring.
Nick's custom Telecaster Deluxe!
A unique mod to an already versatile PJ bass
