Guitar
I believe that if you're not a cork sniffing, six-figure-a-year guitar collector type, you can still get all the classic Fender tones (and a few more besides) using a cheap-as-borscht axe of questionable provenance with a few tweaks and hardware upgrades. I think people who spend anything close to a grand on a strat are crazy. I've just kinda' had it with stratocasters anyway; they just sound so, well, strat-like all the time, and when they don't, they just suck IMHO. Sick to death of playing strats (largely to appease Gibson toting bandleaders and create some sonic separation), I recently gave up my very-well-travelled Tokai Goldstar Sound '64 strat copy (pretty lovely sounding/playing strat, and well recorded...conflicted, anyone?) in a Craigslist trade for a somewhat unrealized Frankentele Cabronita home job, a Garnet 'script' head (which I adore) and a bit of cash.
Beset with issues as it was, this plywood bodied, TV Jones Filtertron loaded mongrel boasted incredible sustain, and a diverse lexicon of easily tweakable tones, from traditional tele to Gretsch to Les Paul, even in it's -ummmh- awkward phase. I immediately replace the crazy Teisco tuners the madman DIYer installed (via much filler goop to stuff backwards-winding, cheapo plastic button tuners into the standard Fender machine head drilling) with mini Grovers which installed effortlessly into the Chinese manufactured (everyone's best guess) neck.
I had a laundry list of repairs and tweaks I wanted in order to get this little troublemaker gig-ready, and for the work I turned to Barry Ewart of Ewart Guitars, (conveniently located between where I live and where I drop off my kid to preschool every day, but also highly recommended by friends) She is now reborn as 'the Bride of Frankentele Cabronita', or the 'Bride of Frankenstein' for short. Let's be realistic, she's 'Frankie'...
Barry dug into her guts and rewired her with quality pots and a push/pull, in/out of phase arrangement, but more importantly he drove dowels into the stripped out neck bolt holes, redrilled her, and corrected a horrendous string misalignment issue that left the high E sting sitting on the very edge of the fretboard.
So where does that leave us? Well, for a relatively paltry sum of money, we've turned this half-baked project guitar, plywood body and all, into an amazingly stable and versatile 'sleeper' guitar; like your uncle's '76 Nova with the cheapo Maaco paint job but serious fire-power under the hood, Frankie gooses your teenage need to go faaassst, generating some seriously funky tones from her lowly body and TV Jones Filtertrons.
Seriously, it's kind of hard to slow down with this thing - it just wants to GO. Chinese manufacture or no, the maple board neck is substantial, comfortable and approachable, with an already-broken-feel to the turned edges. Even with .11 gauge strings and medium action, Frankie feels slinky and easy with the quick, bright response and glassy feel of a good maple fretboard. The factory fret work ain't great, but it sure ain't bad; I didn't have Barry work on the frets after I gave them a good inspection and polishing, and noted the eminent reasonableness of the situation. Barry's doweling/redrilling/neck set job has rendered the neck stable and true, and with all the angles corrected, it plays great. Barry opted to not install a second string tree (for the G and D strings), and although I had a bit of string jumping unpleasantness pre-neck stabilization, I haven't experienced any dodginess on that front since Barry worked his magic.
The string spacing is ideal for fingerpicking, wide enough to enable a comfy and stable right hand technique. I've never felt so comfortable playing an electric guitar without a pick, and Frankie rewards that with a wide dynamic range, from dark, fleshy thumb strum to spiky, finger snap.
On the electronics front, the guitar came to me equipped with twin TV Jones Filtertron pickups sketchily wired to a Les Paul style three-way pickup selector switch which had been fit into a tele control via a drill hole, then mounted to the back of the volume and tone switch, which proved to be counter intuitive as all hell, as well as homely and cheap lookin'. We removed the Les Paul-style 3-way switch and installed a standard tele-style '3-way blade switch, volume, tone' configuration, which necessitated replacing the drilled out control plate. Honestly, the wiring, pots, the whole shebang, was so woeful, that we replaced everything, right down to the unbelievably cheesy output jack. I sleep easier knowing that that thing is no longer in my guitar...
I was in for a bit of surprise when Barry measured the Filtertrons and they came in at about 8K, revealing them to be Powertrons, a higher output version of TV Jones' Filtertrons. I'd half suspected this for a while as I'd noticed them to sound quite Gibson-like, with some thick, wooly mids in amongst their Gretsch-y twangle.
I had Barry to replace the cheap 250k tone pot with a push-pull pot which enables running the Filtertrons out of phase with the 3-way blade switch set in the middle position: in an interesting twist to the mod schematic (which kinda' baffles Barry and me both) the down position of the push/pull pot yields the out-of-phase setting, while the 'up' positions gives you the two pickups in-phase, an arrangement which works well for me as the two-p/u, out-of-phase setting quickly became my favourite lead sound as soon as I tried it out. Boingy, with a humbucker thickness, but also packing a singlecoil cut and thrust, this is an eminently happening option, imparting an amazingly expressive voice that stands out from the tele crowd and allows for effortless T-Bone Walker tones, not something you'd generally expect from a Tele.
All four pickup options are dead quiet; I was amazed at the pristine silence under the headphones when I plugged into my usually-very-hum-prone home studio.
The practical upshot of all this is that Frankie yields a multitude of tones and textures with the four pickup options available and a few tweaks of the knobs, both of which are useable from one end of the sweep to the other, yielding shape and shade to each switch setting . Endless bite and glass is available with the tone pot wide open, but even with the tone pot fully shut down the sounds cut enough to see stage use. With the upgraded wiring, I rarely have either knob opened up fully, and really enjoy all the colours available throughout both potentiometer's range. I had no trouble getting fat-but-stringy textures for some Wes-style octave playing, then two songs later grabbing some serious rockabilly twang. The out-of-phase position elicits some beautifully honky, penetrating boink, the notes blooming organically after the initial attack, particularly when you lean into the strings a bit. This is now my number one guitar for all things funk and country. It makes me think of Memphis. Like, all of it: from Howlin' Wolf to Elvis to the Mar Keys to the Bar Kays to Shaft to '70s Rufus Thomas, this el-cheapo mutant wants to get greasy and funky as a plate of rib-tips at the Cozy Corner.
This is definitely the most tonally diverse guitar I own at present, after leaning on my extremely versatile '93 Gibson ES-335 for some nineteen years (although I really want the out-of-phase mod on the 335 now). This is not to say that Frankie will usurp my curvy blonde Gibson as my go-to guitar, but it certainly will be ultra-handy when gig-bag portability and sonic flexibility are important considerations (which is often; most airlines allow you to store your gig bag in the overhead compartment as carry-on luggage. You have to watch out for your fellow passengers, but at least you have some control over the situation. And hell, I ride the bus to the gig much more regularly than I fly and gig bags are really helpful in the transit environ, too).
With her sloppy handiwork, flaking cheap'n'flashy auto paint and tele (re)construction, she's pretty much pre-uglified, indestructible, versatile as hell, and thusly, extremely useful. I would have to assume that the Fender Custom Shop Cabronitas look, play, sound and feel way cooler than Frankie, but I don't have the cash or the care to compare, and I wouldn't ever want a prissy tele that I can't abuse freely. Isn't 'rugged and ready' the whole concept behind the design of the telecaster? Frankie's got that in aces and spades...
As for Barry and Ewart guitars, I give a thumbs up. Barry's prices are very reasonable, with minimal markups for parts, and his handiwork is excellent. Turnaround time is reasonable, but I sense that priority/emergency work could be arranged when necessary. The shop's in my hood, he's a cool guy and hell, he even hung with my tech guru of old, He Who Shall Not Be Named (a bit of a legend in the Northwest), so what's not to like? Thanks Barry for the excellent work!
Below are some before/after shots.
- Ikea Birch Wood Butcher Block, An Ur-telecaster...
Here it is! I hinted at it last week, and due to the generosity of a benefactor (a little bit surprise to be asked for her humble kitchen appliance), I managed to put my hands on a second hand (with vintage patina) Ikea butcher block...
- 1977 Electra X-230 Japan Les Paul In Buffalo For $350
This seller is offering an Electra X-230 which appears to be all original. Yes, the Electra came stock with one open coil zebra pickup and one chrome humbucker just like the pic. The X-230, sometimes referred to as Omega X-230 (?) is a copy...
- Electra Zephyr In Nashua Vt W/ Gibson Case For $300
Don't confuse theseZephyr's with a Les Paul - with it's German Carve, contoured body and maple bolt on neck and phase reverse coil split humbucker pickups (with 5 position rotary switch) these are probably closer in spirit and sound...
- His Latest Flame
Cabronita frankentele, a vibey little number. The other night I made one of the weirdest gear decisions in my long history of making weird gear decisions. I traded a perfectly desirable '82 Tokai Goldstar Sound '60's strat...
- Expect The Unexpected
My slide ride - Dano '63 Every time I do studio work, I come to the same realization: things just don't work out the way I think they will. This is a good thing. I did a session today for my good friends the East Vamps,...
Guitar
Frankentele Cabronita - post-op
 |
| Cheap, cheerful and chock fulla' happening tones, the Frankentele Cabronita reborn! |
I believe that if you're not a cork sniffing, six-figure-a-year guitar collector type, you can still get all the classic Fender tones (and a few more besides) using a cheap-as-borscht axe of questionable provenance with a few tweaks and hardware upgrades. I think people who spend anything close to a grand on a strat are crazy. I've just kinda' had it with stratocasters anyway; they just sound so, well, strat-like all the time, and when they don't, they just suck IMHO. Sick to death of playing strats (largely to appease Gibson toting bandleaders and create some sonic separation), I recently gave up my very-well-travelled Tokai Goldstar Sound '64 strat copy (pretty lovely sounding/playing strat, and well recorded...conflicted, anyone?) in a Craigslist trade for a somewhat unrealized Frankentele Cabronita home job, a Garnet 'script' head (which I adore) and a bit of cash.
Beset with issues as it was, this plywood bodied, TV Jones Filtertron loaded mongrel boasted incredible sustain, and a diverse lexicon of easily tweakable tones, from traditional tele to Gretsch to Les Paul, even in it's -ummmh- awkward phase. I immediately replace the crazy Teisco tuners the madman DIYer installed (via much filler goop to stuff backwards-winding, cheapo plastic button tuners into the standard Fender machine head drilling) with mini Grovers which installed effortlessly into the Chinese manufactured (everyone's best guess) neck.
I had a laundry list of repairs and tweaks I wanted in order to get this little troublemaker gig-ready, and for the work I turned to Barry Ewart of Ewart Guitars, (conveniently located between where I live and where I drop off my kid to preschool every day, but also highly recommended by friends) She is now reborn as 'the Bride of Frankentele Cabronita', or the 'Bride of Frankenstein' for short. Let's be realistic, she's 'Frankie'...
 |
| Smile for the camera Frankie! |
Barry dug into her guts and rewired her with quality pots and a push/pull, in/out of phase arrangement, but more importantly he drove dowels into the stripped out neck bolt holes, redrilled her, and corrected a horrendous string misalignment issue that left the high E sting sitting on the very edge of the fretboard.
So where does that leave us? Well, for a relatively paltry sum of money, we've turned this half-baked project guitar, plywood body and all, into an amazingly stable and versatile 'sleeper' guitar; like your uncle's '76 Nova with the cheapo Maaco paint job but serious fire-power under the hood, Frankie gooses your teenage need to go faaassst, generating some seriously funky tones from her lowly body and TV Jones Filtertrons.
Seriously, it's kind of hard to slow down with this thing - it just wants to GO. Chinese manufacture or no, the maple board neck is substantial, comfortable and approachable, with an already-broken-feel to the turned edges. Even with .11 gauge strings and medium action, Frankie feels slinky and easy with the quick, bright response and glassy feel of a good maple fretboard. The factory fret work ain't great, but it sure ain't bad; I didn't have Barry work on the frets after I gave them a good inspection and polishing, and noted the eminent reasonableness of the situation. Barry's doweling/redrilling/neck set job has rendered the neck stable and true, and with all the angles corrected, it plays great. Barry opted to not install a second string tree (for the G and D strings), and although I had a bit of string jumping unpleasantness pre-neck stabilization, I haven't experienced any dodginess on that front since Barry worked his magic.
The string spacing is ideal for fingerpicking, wide enough to enable a comfy and stable right hand technique. I've never felt so comfortable playing an electric guitar without a pick, and Frankie rewards that with a wide dynamic range, from dark, fleshy thumb strum to spiky, finger snap.
On the electronics front, the guitar came to me equipped with twin TV Jones Filtertron pickups sketchily wired to a Les Paul style three-way pickup selector switch which had been fit into a tele control via a drill hole, then mounted to the back of the volume and tone switch, which proved to be counter intuitive as all hell, as well as homely and cheap lookin'. We removed the Les Paul-style 3-way switch and installed a standard tele-style '3-way blade switch, volume, tone' configuration, which necessitated replacing the drilled out control plate. Honestly, the wiring, pots, the whole shebang, was so woeful, that we replaced everything, right down to the unbelievably cheesy output jack. I sleep easier knowing that that thing is no longer in my guitar...
I was in for a bit of surprise when Barry measured the Filtertrons and they came in at about 8K, revealing them to be Powertrons, a higher output version of TV Jones' Filtertrons. I'd half suspected this for a while as I'd noticed them to sound quite Gibson-like, with some thick, wooly mids in amongst their Gretsch-y twangle.
I had Barry to replace the cheap 250k tone pot with a push-pull pot which enables running the Filtertrons out of phase with the 3-way blade switch set in the middle position: in an interesting twist to the mod schematic (which kinda' baffles Barry and me both) the down position of the push/pull pot yields the out-of-phase setting, while the 'up' positions gives you the two pickups in-phase, an arrangement which works well for me as the two-p/u, out-of-phase setting quickly became my favourite lead sound as soon as I tried it out. Boingy, with a humbucker thickness, but also packing a singlecoil cut and thrust, this is an eminently happening option, imparting an amazingly expressive voice that stands out from the tele crowd and allows for effortless T-Bone Walker tones, not something you'd generally expect from a Tele.
All four pickup options are dead quiet; I was amazed at the pristine silence under the headphones when I plugged into my usually-very-hum-prone home studio.
The practical upshot of all this is that Frankie yields a multitude of tones and textures with the four pickup options available and a few tweaks of the knobs, both of which are useable from one end of the sweep to the other, yielding shape and shade to each switch setting . Endless bite and glass is available with the tone pot wide open, but even with the tone pot fully shut down the sounds cut enough to see stage use. With the upgraded wiring, I rarely have either knob opened up fully, and really enjoy all the colours available throughout both potentiometer's range. I had no trouble getting fat-but-stringy textures for some Wes-style octave playing, then two songs later grabbing some serious rockabilly twang. The out-of-phase position elicits some beautifully honky, penetrating boink, the notes blooming organically after the initial attack, particularly when you lean into the strings a bit. This is now my number one guitar for all things funk and country. It makes me think of Memphis. Like, all of it: from Howlin' Wolf to Elvis to the Mar Keys to the Bar Kays to Shaft to '70s Rufus Thomas, this el-cheapo mutant wants to get greasy and funky as a plate of rib-tips at the Cozy Corner.
This is definitely the most tonally diverse guitar I own at present, after leaning on my extremely versatile '93 Gibson ES-335 for some nineteen years (although I really want the out-of-phase mod on the 335 now). This is not to say that Frankie will usurp my curvy blonde Gibson as my go-to guitar, but it certainly will be ultra-handy when gig-bag portability and sonic flexibility are important considerations (which is often; most airlines allow you to store your gig bag in the overhead compartment as carry-on luggage. You have to watch out for your fellow passengers, but at least you have some control over the situation. And hell, I ride the bus to the gig much more regularly than I fly and gig bags are really helpful in the transit environ, too).
With her sloppy handiwork, flaking cheap'n'flashy auto paint and tele (re)construction, she's pretty much pre-uglified, indestructible, versatile as hell, and thusly, extremely useful. I would have to assume that the Fender Custom Shop Cabronitas look, play, sound and feel way cooler than Frankie, but I don't have the cash or the care to compare, and I wouldn't ever want a prissy tele that I can't abuse freely. Isn't 'rugged and ready' the whole concept behind the design of the telecaster? Frankie's got that in aces and spades...
As for Barry and Ewart guitars, I give a thumbs up. Barry's prices are very reasonable, with minimal markups for parts, and his handiwork is excellent. Turnaround time is reasonable, but I sense that priority/emergency work could be arranged when necessary. The shop's in my hood, he's a cool guy and hell, he even hung with my tech guru of old, He Who Shall Not Be Named (a bit of a legend in the Northwest), so what's not to like? Thanks Barry for the excellent work!
Below are some before/after shots.
 |
| These funky old japanese tuners were secured in the oversized drill holes with some nameless filler goop. |
 |
| I installed new Grover minis (and none too straight...). They work great, but they do feel a little crowded. |
 |
| A view of the tragic string/neck alignment before the reset. |
 |
| Ah, that's more like it! |
 |
| A view of the former switching system, which was maddeningly counter-intuitive. |
 |
| Now Frankie's got a standard tele 3-way blade switch, volume, tone arrangement with a push/pull pot for phase switching. Strangely, the down position yields the out-of-phase setting. |
- Ikea Birch Wood Butcher Block, An Ur-telecaster...
Here it is! I hinted at it last week, and due to the generosity of a benefactor (a little bit surprise to be asked for her humble kitchen appliance), I managed to put my hands on a second hand (with vintage patina) Ikea butcher block...
- 1977 Electra X-230 Japan Les Paul In Buffalo For $350
This seller is offering an Electra X-230 which appears to be all original. Yes, the Electra came stock with one open coil zebra pickup and one chrome humbucker just like the pic. The X-230, sometimes referred to as Omega X-230 (?) is a copy...
- Electra Zephyr In Nashua Vt W/ Gibson Case For $300
Don't confuse theseZephyr's with a Les Paul - with it's German Carve, contoured body and maple bolt on neck and phase reverse coil split humbucker pickups (with 5 position rotary switch) these are probably closer in spirit and sound...
- His Latest Flame
Cabronita frankentele, a vibey little number. The other night I made one of the weirdest gear decisions in my long history of making weird gear decisions. I traded a perfectly desirable '82 Tokai Goldstar Sound '60's strat...
- Expect The Unexpected
My slide ride - Dano '63 Every time I do studio work, I come to the same realization: things just don't work out the way I think they will. This is a good thing. I did a session today for my good friends the East Vamps,...