Will’s Guitar Center > Customizing

Building my own desirable Tele model

2020 is the year Corona changed the world, big time! But it’s also the year of the Fender Telecaster’s 70^th anniversary. It all started in 1950 when Leo Fender introduced his legendary Fender Broadcaster. Now 70 years later, besides the change of name in the early days, nothing really dramatically has changed on the basic design of the Telecaster. To me the whole secret of its success is linked to just a few important basic aspects.

One of the main reasons the Tele always sounds so damn tight and steady is the fact that the strings go through the body instead of through a tremolo bridge unit, like in case of its younger brother the Stratocaster. This way the increase of resonating body wood became essential.

Another great thing on the Tele is its headstock design. The direction of the strings to the tuners on the headstock just follow a straight line without meeting any obstacles other than the nut. This is the main reason your Tele will always stay in tune after a proper set up. Everything else to me is only optional, like whatever hardware, single coils or humbuckers, maple or rosewood fretboards etc.. The basic tone of a Tele stats from its design…

For my latest project I have put together my own desirable Telecaster parts, containing a light weight, 2 part swamp ash body and a 9,5 radius 21 fret maple neck. Instead of the original single coils, I went for a pair of GFS gold foil humbucker shape pickups. Actually, they are connected as single coils with a 6k output for the neck and 7,2k in the bridge position. With these pickups you’ll keep your typical Fender twang but with slightly more muscle.

Check out the demo bellow:

My 2020 Tele collection

Other customizing projects