Memphis Twangcaster Tele (sold 23-03-2011)

After building my first Telecaster I immediately felt challenged to build another one.

I had already found a nice secondhand body on the internet for not too much money, which would be the base of this guitar. The color was metallic blue, and appeared to be so good that it did not need any re-spraying. I had also laid eyes on some pickups that I intended to buy. A bit of Googling learned that I could only buy them on-line from the US. The pickups I was after was a set of GFS Memphis Alnico pickups which I ordered at Guitarfetish.com I liked the sound which combined the power of a humbucker with the twang of a single-coil. And hey, don't they just look great? And the price was quite nice I must say. Even shipping them all the way from the US. An other important thing I needed was a neck. It had to be an all maple neck, because that would look the best on this blue guitar body. Again via the internet, on Marktplaats.nl I found a second-hand 'no-brand' strat neck. It's allways a gamble buying this way, but my former experiences weren't bad. The no-brand appeared to be a quite nice Richwood neck. It felt very nice, and looked good. Nice and straight and no fretwear.

My design (which I had already made on the computer) showed that a pearl-white pickguard would look real nice. This pickguard had already a space for a humbucker. Fitting the bridge humbucker left me with two choices. I could either use a telecaster bridge plate fit for a humbucker, or a fixed bridge and mount the humbucker in a ring. Via Marktplaats I bought a six saddle fixed bridge which left me with the second option. A visit to my new friend at customworldguitarparts in Amsterdam brought me the pickguard and most of the other hardware and electronics I needed. This time I chose to use a Fender four-way switch, which would give me and extra option by selecting both the neck- and bridge pickup in series, which gives a bigger, louder sound. I wanted to really try that on this new guitar. Now it was time to fit the main items together and do some serious measuring. How would the neck fit in the body? Where would I have to mount the bridge? Could I line it up properly with the pickups? How to mount the pickups in the cavities that aren't made for humbucker sized pickups? Now I was beginning to get an idea of what my guitar was going to look like. And I must say, I was not disappointed! It all looked promising. I had to widen the cavities for the pickups, and to mount the neck-pickup and cover up the cavity I had to custom make a special pickup ring. Using the material from the left-over black pickguard from my former telecaster, I managed to make one.

It took some time, and some work, but I gave me just what I needed.

Because I was using bigger pots and a Fender four-way switch I also had to make a bot more room in the body under the control plate. I decided to use the control plate en chrome knobs that came with the body.

Having drilled all the holes in the right places (again I made the sting-through-body construction) it was time to shield the electronics cavities in the body. Copper shielding tape helped me do this.

The headstock of the neck had the stratocaster looks. I could choose to transform it into a Telecaster headstock, but I decided to leave it this way. It looked very okay in combination with this body, so why change it? It wasn't going to be a standard telecaster after all. Again I applied my own logo to the headstock and named this guitar the "Memphis Twangcaster Tele". Referring to the name off the pickups. For the tuners I used another set of Gotoh tuners which I obtained from my new friend at usedguitarparts in Velsen. He also advised to change the bridge saddles with stainless-steel ones from Graphtec. And I must say, they really sound much better. They give a much better sustain and definition.Well. What more can I say?

Off cause I had to do some minor adjusting on the truss rod, and the bridge saddles to set it up perfectly, but that gave me no problems.

I managed to give it a nice low action using a set of 0.10 'd Addario strings.

And the sound??

Well, it brought me everything I hoped for.

This guitar had plenty of body and sustain.

The pickups sound both strong and warm, but also bright and full of twang.

De four-way switch worked out right, after I discovered that I had to part the black negative wire from the ground wire of the neck-pickup.

The fourth position gives a warmer and stronger sound, very useful for soloing especially with distortion/overdrive.

And now to end this story, some nice pictures of my "Memphis Twangcaster Tele". I hope it will inspire you.

Well, how does it sound?