Show me your mods

[Che_Guitarra]

I'm looking to add a telecaster to the fold - but as a hopeless modder, most 'off the shelf' tele's don't really get my blood pumping.

I like a guitar that's tweaked and unique - like it's been played for 1000 years, been patched together with random available parts, chasing a tone goal... or with a custom pickguard that looks just right. Whilst I don't have any tele's, here's one of my tone machines to illustrate my tastes:



Surely there's more hopeless guitar tweakers out there like me. If you have any modified, non-standard telecaster pics - please post them up. I need inspiration

[Tonemonkey]

Welcome.

Most guys here are "Serial Modders" ........... just drop into the Tele-Technical forum. The Tele is very versatile and because of its construction process, ideally suited for modding.

None of my Teles are stock, with swapped out pups, Pgs, caps etc but they all look like teles one red, one black, 2 BSB blackguards so not much point in posting pics (again!) - look in one of the "show us your teles" threads.

[trev333]

nothing like taking a router to a perfectly finished guitar body... and sticking some dog ears in it and destroying a so so 45 single...... ...

my #2 Tele now as a result....

[Che_Guitarra]

Originally Posted by Tonemonkey

Most guys here are "Serial Modders" ........... just drop into the Tele-Technical forum.

Woohoo That's a welcome discovery. But, i'd still like a single post where people can post their 'unique' teles rather than scrolling through countless posts for an eye candy fix

Trev333 - what a loveable mongrel that is, that control plate is a great idea

[southwoodgtars]

Here is my beater. The bridge pickup route had been chiseled fir a humbucker so I took some mohogany and patched the holes. Did a hap hazard for arm cut. She plays good she is just a bit ugly. Sorry for my grammar. I have a hangover and am lazy. :)

[cornfed]

Bought this thang at the swap meet about 16-18 yrs ago for $15.. it was a complete wreck, the once floyd rose style tremolo was completly busted out, and it looked like someone tried to repair it with a dull chisel

The neck and rest of the body were structualy sound,,(all it was, was body and neck), nothing else,, I routed out where old trem was and fit a big hunk of aluminum in , then bolted to body, then set bridge to that

This is a short scale and the string spacing is also smaller than standard, it was a pain in the but to find saddles,, I finally found some that had enough meat on the sides to where I could sand 'em down to make 'em narrower

[southwoodgtars]

I really like the ingenuity on your repair for the bridge. Cool looking guitar for $15!

[mulic3]

As you can see, I added a mini switch for Series-Split-Parallel. Covers a lot of range.

[Che_Guitarra]

Well, I just bit the bullet and bought most of the parts (@ Warmoth) needed for a nice and snappy '52 style BSB Tele. Plenty of discreet mods planned, i'll check back in once it's all screwed together.

[Big_Bend]

[SpeyFly]

Before




during mod




After

[caliban335]

Modded Tele #1: This is an MIJ Jerry Donahue modified with three pickups from David Plummer (Zhangbucker Pickups); a Bell Tone at the bridge and two of his mini-humbuckers at the middle and neck. It has a five way switch wired thus back to front:

- bridge
- bridge & middle
- bridge & neck
- neck & middle
- neck

The clean tone is awesome and it dirts up pretty nicely as well.

[caliban335]

Modded Tele #2: The body, neck and assorted screws are the only original parts from this MIM '69 Thinline. Lollar Special T at the bridge and Charlie Christian at the neck replace the original pickups and they are wired with a four way switch adding neck & bridge in series to the standard three way options. It also has "cocked wah" on the bridge pickup via a push-pull on the tone control. Standard 1 meg pots were replaced with 256k, along with a Wilkinson compensated bridge, Gotoh locking tuners and a tort pickguard.