American Deluxe Tele Project

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Thought you might be interested in my Tele Deluxe project. I have had this 2006 model for about 4 years now. Sat in its case, or was displayed on the wall most of the time. Just did not like the sound. Pretty, though.

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New Parts: Since I have a couple of other Teles with single coils, I thought I would try something different with this one. Go for a Custom-type guitar with a humbucker at the neck. I chose a standard humbucker sized WRHB made by Jamie at the Creamery, with a chrome "H" cover. For the bridge, I bought a Cavalier Lion from Mr. DiStefano here on TDPRI. I put it all together with a ToneShaper with the five position switch. Finally, I thought it would look nice as a black guard - three layer of course, since the Deluxe is bound on top.

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Surgery: First shot is just after I opened her up, with a picture of the control plate and the nest of wires on the S-1 switch. I had to make a little adjustment in the control cavity to fit the ToneShaper. In some of the American bodies, there is a bump near the rear of the control cavity to which a ground screw is attached. That is metallic paint in the control cavity. I had to remove this bump to fit the wire attachments on the ToneShaper. Was very easy to do with a sharp chisel. You can see in the last picture she is starting to come together nicely.

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Final product: She looks, plays and sounds fabulous! The Lion and the Creamery pickup are nicely matched. I am not an expert on the tones of the original WRHB pickups but I can say that this Creamery pup has a voice very different than my LP. Sounds really great. And Rob's Cavalier is a screamer. Can get wonderful traditional Tele tones and fabulous overdrive. Can clearly hear each string. I also love the ToneShaper. Very easy to install and I find that the volume and tone controls are very, very useable. Also, in position five, with the full humbucker engaged, it switches to 500k on the volume pot. In the other positions it is at 250k (you can have all positions at 500k, if you want).
Side note: I had a little trouble getting the ToneShaper to work properly. The guys there were just great in helping me to resolve the problem, and it works just as advertised.

Jaime (I previously misspelled his name) at Creamery also was very generous with his time in helping me get his pickup properly installed. I can't say enough good things about the vendors I have discovered through TDPRI.

[BB123]

Very sweet. Love the look of that burst.