How did you end up getting hooked on a Tele?

[Platefire]

I have to be honest, I am 58, started playing when I was 15 and never was even tempted to play a tele and they were not even appealing to me until about 10 years ago.
I think the turn off for me was the ear piercing brightness of the guitar. About 15 years ago a musician friend encouraged me to play his 1969 tele and I did just to try something different. At first I wasn't impressed but continued to play it off and on along with other guitars. At some point I started playing the tele more and more.
Beside the action and playability being great on this guitar
the tonal change happened when I tried this guitar with some different tube amps. To me the tele matched to the right amp is pretty close to tonal guitar perfection. Having said that most will consider my amp selection weird because I perfer running my tele through a dark sounding amp. My two favorites is a 60's Silvertone 1482 and a Genereal Electric PA-20 Integrated Hi-Fi amp that I converted for guitar that runs through an old 70's closed back 2-12 cab that was the speaker cab for one of those old SS Peavey Musician heads. Weird Huh?
Even though I still toy around with other guitars the
Tele will forever be one of my main stays--so how did you end up getting hooked on a Tele? Platefire

[simplygoodmusic]

Until about a year ago, fenders in general sounded horrible to me. Thin and wimpy. That is until I did some guitar shopping last year. I was trying some stuff out and picked up a tele and it sounded great. It took me about 6 months to move away from the neck position and not find the sound annoying, but now I'm hooked.

[TG]

Borrowed one at a jam session and played it thru a tube combo.

[andy__woods]

I have no idea.

I think the first thing that got me interested was the Telecoustic. This was my second guitar about 4 years ago. My friend was playing a Red MIM Strat, and I figured I'd go for the Tele so that we could match, but not be identical. After owning acoustics for a long time, and finally ready to get an electric, the Tele was the first guitar I ran to. I can't really explain it, but I'm glad this is where I ended up, and not those nasty pointy guitars. The Tele is definitely the guitar for me, and someday I might get a different kind, maybe a LesPaul, or an SG, or a Strat, but I really don't feel the need to, the Tele makes me happy enough

[zombywoof]

Well, ya got 3 years on me Platefire but I started playin a few years younger than you so I guess we are about even.
Got hooked on a Tele cuz I could not afford a Strat. Got my first used Tele in the mid-60s. I guess it just kinda grew on me.

[Ptrallan01]

Mild arthritis in my hands. I never wanted to play electric but found out I didn't have to work as hard so I tried several and the tele doesn't set my knuckles to screaming and it so easy to play that I was hooked from the first time I played one. The fact that I can play hymns, church blues/funk on one guitar didn't hurt either.

Peter

[moondoggie999]

and thats when I finally heard SRV, so I bought a strat and I just didn't like it very much. Right around that time I started to really like modern country lead guitar stuff, found out most of the stuff being played that I really liked was by Brent Mason and so I went and bought a b-bender 3 pick up tele. That guitar was pretty close to what I wanted but too heavy for me, so I ended up with my current guitar, and ash body american tele with the standard 2 pick ups and I love it.

[RockinCarl]

Danny Gatton and Vince Gill. If it weren't for the both of them, I'd still be playing Strats.

[Platefire]

Yeah I have one of those pointy 80's EVH Kramers Focus
1000, I have a 95 Ibanez RG-450, 98 MIJ 50's Fender Strat RI, 70's Solid Mohogony German Hoyer Les Paul, 80's Squire (plywood)Bullet, 50's Harmony Lap Steel and my most recent new Hwy 1 Tele that replaced my friends 1969 Tele has been getting all my attention lately. Wow! what a great value in a guitar. Mine is three tone sunburst with maple finger board. Platefire

[kingalingus]

Nothing looks cooler too me than a Tele and in every genre of music, the cool people play Teles...IMO

Also, I was talking to Larry Mitchell one day (Ibanez endorcer and modern Floyd Rose type of player) - please don't hold that against him. Anyway, he said that "you have to be reeealy good to play a Tele" and while I'm not reeealy good, I'm trying every day.

There is nothing more satisfying too me than nailing something difficult on one of my Teles. With a Tele, it's harder to get away with a mistake because every nuance rings so clearly. Anyway, those are a few of my reasons.

[KingPussBlues]

And, it was a Standard! I was a goner after that!

John 8)

[Pete Galati]

My first good guitar was a used Tele that I bought in the mid '70s. So I've always felt a closeness to Telecasters.

It hasn't always been my main guitar, but it's always what I go back to.

I prefer not to think that I'm hooked on Telecasters though. It is however the guitar that I'm the most comfortable with. But if you're going to be hooked on a guitar, it might as well be the Tele. At least it won't send you to the poor house unless you insist on buying collector's Telecaster with inflated prices.

I've found that when I need a guitar without "piercing brightness", one of my humbucker Telecasters will usually work just fine, and I still get to use the Tele's great control layout that way.

Pete

[Tom S]

I built one around 1980, and played it almost exclusively for about a dozen years. Always liked the tele shape.

[Bill]

It was in '89 in the bay area in California. There'd was a refinished '66 Tele in a local music store and that was the first Telecaster that I ever picked up. I tried it and thought, "Wow, these guitars aren't bad at all..."

I couldn't afford it. But then the big earthquake happened, and they had a sale to cover some damage I guess they'd had. I went back in and they'd dropped the price to $550, so I bought it. So I bought the first Telecaster I ever tried.

[Maestro]

Warning:this post turned out to be longer than I anticipated, spelling errors will be included, if that bothers you please skip this post.

my dad has a couple. one of them is his number 1 guitar (a near mint 1969 rosewood telecaster he bought back then) He has older ones, but that's his favorite. A drawing of that guitar hangs on the wall in the living room, when I started learning guitar (about 3 years ago now) I was playing his gretsch but my left hand had some trouble with the very wide neck. (I don't have a thumg on my left hand man my index finger is slightly deformed and weirdly rotated to compensate for the lack of a thumb)

so to see if it was at all possible for me to learn to play he took out his tele (witch I had only seen once or twice in 18 years) and he let me try it there, the smaller spacing of the strings made it easier so we took a 'newer' tele (his old 74) and I learned to play on that one.

I wasn't really know with the meaning of telecaster (to me a electric was a electric) until a buddy of my father had a lot of wood lying around and wanted to build a guitar out of it and he asked my dad to help. I went along and I was so amazed he gave me a piece of the wood (90 year old wood his fatehr in law had taked with him when he moved from indonesia) and told me I could have it If I would promiss him that I would build a tele with it. So in researching the tele I came on this site and I learned that an electric guitar is not just an electric guitar

[Ericwest53]

First I saw and heard Jimmy Groves in Morningside MD, then Danny Gatton at The Cellar Door, Sid Hudson at Hunters' Lodge in Manassas, in the late 70s and went on to play Pedal Steel against about a hundred of them over the years. Some pretty good.

Then Brent Mason, Brad Paisley, Paul Anderson and a couple others, gave me the spark to buy a few of them and take up my long neglected guitar playing.

I finally quit buying them and now can't stop playing my favorite two.

:)

EJL

[TheSonicBlue]

I've always been a Tele man! My MIM Standard was my first guitar, and still is. I haven't stopped loving Teles since. They look sweet, balance PERFECTLY on a strap, have a fantastic sound for any style of music, and the control setup is just right for me. What more could you want?

[bad porcupine]

I'm a Tele newbie, but I'll chime in anyway.

Been playing for about 25 years, on all manner of guitars, including Strats, hollowbodies, cheapo les paul copies, a couple of basses for variety, home-made planks... I'm probably forgetting a few. Lots of different kinds of guitars.

Seeing Keef and the boys back in the day got me interested in Telecasters, but for some reason I never got around to buying one. Finally, at age 45, I got my **** together and got a '72 Deluxe RI, and I really feel like I've found an old friend. Maybe it's just the honeymoon, but this guitar just feels right. She sits on my lap and makes me happy :)

It just feels right.

[Tele295]

GE Smith's weekly blackguard commercial on SNL brought me to full-time Tele playing; Gatton & Buchanan kept me here

[Platefire]

Boy! We got a mess of Tele Lovers here!
I recall back in the 80's I got to where I could pick out the teles in most popular songs on country radio. Even though I wasn't playing a tele I decided a tele has a very distinctive sound that few other guitars come close in duplicating. A clean sounding tele is easy to ID and only when you add effects like distortion make it harder to ID. I have to admit that I guess I've always loved the body shape, hardware arrangement and pickgaurd shape. I don't understand the previous statement about a tele being hard to play because to me their ease of handeling and natural feel is a main attraction. Thats it, a tele just feels natural to play.
When I said Hooked I didn't mean like a drug addiction or a bad thing that harms a person. A guitar to me is like a tool. When a human gets their hands on a good tool and learns how to operate it, they can do amazing things. A telecaster is the original first solid body electric guitars ever mass produced and as it turns out about 56 years after it was created is still holding its own as the greatest tool for creating electric guitar sound ever created. So Hooked in this case is a point when a guitarist determines a telecaster is a nessesary tool in creating great guitar sounds and tone and it becomes one of his must have main tools. As I know now that as long as the Lord allows me to play a Telecaster will be in the action. Platefire[/url]

[Michael Murphy]

Seeing Robbie Robertson playing "Who Do You Love" on one back in the '60s when he was with Ronnie Hawkins pretty much solidified it for me.

He's mellowed quite a bit since then, but he was absolutely on fire back in that time period. I'd never seen (or heard) anything like it...


-Michael
Charter Member S. Texas He-Man Emoticon Haters Local #316

[Platefire]

Are you the same Micheal Murphy that had the song "Wildfire"?
Platefire

[PaulaT]

I'm 48 and just started playing a telecaster that I bought used. Have played mostly acoustic guitar all my life, but
I've been getting into electric. I immediately loved the way it felt and sounded, and now I see teles everywhere I look that I never noticed before!

[csapo]

For 25 years I'd been a Strat guy. Never even ventured towards humbuckers, let alone a Telecaster. I've always admired the Tele but thought it was too one dimensional (boy was I wrong). In addition, my brother in law (who is a far better player than me) has an AV '52RI and had complained to me that he felt the neck was too sticky. And that comment stuck with me for quite a few years.

About a year ago, I decided to try one at my local GC. WOW!!!!! I've since sold a couple Strats to fund my Telecaster GAS'n and now I'm up to 16!!! I'm making up for much lost time.

'Nuf said.