Hey all
Back from a weekend at my parents', where I stumbled upon this:
https://imgur.com/a/rAjGuThe first guitar I ever gigged! 2004 Affinity Tele, which as far as I can remember played and sounded much better than it had any right to do.
It's in a bit of a state obviously as it was stripped of its pickups and left unstringed in a bag for about 8 years. Oh, and in my teenage wisdom I had attacked the gloss finish with rough sandpaper and reliced it... Not proud of that one but it actually doesn't look completely shit.
Thought it was a shame to leave it there so took it back as a project.
Now as a matter of course I'll clean up the neck, polish the manky frets and do a decent setup. I'll also go over the body again with finer sandpaper to get a more uniform satin finish.
But what to do with the electronics? A few options:
- standard Tele pickups, set up in standard tuning. Could do, but I already have a much nicer blackguard Tele so pretty redundant. Could always sell it afterwards I guess.
- standard Tele pickups but set it up in open G and finally get stuck in Stones stuff and slide.
- Esquire it, with a raunchy P90ish bridge pickup (I think axesrus do one of these) and a new scratch plate. Hmmmm...
- go nuts. At the moment the guitar my arsenal lacks is a rock/metal monster. So go the Esquire route but with a super hot humbucker in Tele bridge format. Again I think axesrus do one of these.
A few constraints: has to be a toploader bridge as the guitar is not drilled for string through, has to be cheap as I really don't want to spend more than £100 on it, especially if end up selling it.
So... What would you do with this??
Cheers guys
Click here to see me butchering some classic solos!
Comments
Its an option.
Bigsby
While you're at it, fuck that six saddle bridge off too
“Theory is something that is written down after the music has been made so we can explain it to others”– Levi Clay
Concentrate on one good pickup for now.
A dual coil T replacement pickup could be wired up to a three-way lever selector switch to offer series/single/parallel interconnection of the coils.
Alternatively, leave the pickup in full output mode. Wire the selector switch for volume only/Vol+Tone/Eldred.
Somebody on this board makes a dual output Broadcaster style single coil pickup. Full/tapped/Eldred
Mine started out much like yours, then...
I stripped the poly & oil finished the body.
Replaced the bridge with a brass saddled ashtray one.
Upgraded the tuners.
Cut my own Esquire guard from an LP
Installed an OilCity Esquire harness & alligator 90 pickup.
Then I set it up & played the hell out of it!
Esquire: https://imgur.com/a/gXdfg
Total spend was under £150 including the pickup & harness.
I liked that.
The series/parallel option on a push pot brings a 'little' snap back, but make no mistake it's a full bucker tone.
Another with a Creamery Red 79 at the bridge and a Tele size P90 at the neck
And another Esquire with a MOJO Lap Steel pickup and Wilkinson half bridge, Eldred wired which is awesome tuned open G
All are great in their own way as a different take on the Tele, they are such wonderfully simple modding platforms