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I bought from Pat's Guitars
Pat does way more than screw parts together. I own 28 guitars, including 12 Teles, including some very expensive Custom Shop and vintage Teles. My absolute favorite guitars to play are 2 I bought from Pat's Guitars. Pat does the custom routing, upgraded shielding, completely assembles the electronics using high end parts, and levels the frets. Most of the guitars he lists at eBay are custom-rebuilt Fenders, but he also builds guitars from the ground up. If you visit patsguitars.com and go through his past sales you can see examples of guitars being finished and assembled from raw wood forms (so yes he does "drill all the holes," and a lot more). I don't disagree he markets his products well (what's wrong with that?), but he is also a very talented luthier (he does everything: hand cut bone nuts and saddles, neck resets on acoustics, full refrets, etc.-you name it), and the guitars I bought are actually worth a lot more to me than what I paid, because of the way they play and sound, which put them in a class by themselves in my collection. Could you buy all the parts for the same or less? Maybe sometimes. But there is value in the skill and knowledge that is behind a good luthier's labor, and Pat is a great one. And he loves Telecasters. So if you want to be skeptical, that's totally ok, but it is just wrong to say he only screws parts together and solders a couple of wires like a 12 year old could.
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