tubedude
Tele-Afflicted
Finished my blackguardish Tele.
Awesome sounds, sustain for days and weighs in at 5 lbs. even!
Awesome sounds, sustain for days and weighs in at 5 lbs. even!
Blackguardian Lives!
- Thread starter tubedude
- Start date
kuch
Friend of Leo's
Nice!!
Pinecaster?
Pinecaster?
El Tele Lobo
Poster Extraordinaire
VERY nice! We need stats though! Details, man!
tubedude
Tele-Afflicted
Paulonia body, flame roasted Maple neck, '53 pickups from Monty's, cold rolled steel Bridge, brass saddles, bakelite guard, ferrules and all steel nickle plated, kluson tuners, 3 way, bone nut.
I sanded, cleaned, and sealed the body with tinted lacquer. Then grain filled with Aquacoat clear filler that I added fine gold mica powder to. Light sand, clean, another coat of tint, and 2 coats of clear.
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Looks pine.
Blues Twanger
Tele-Afflicted
tubedude
Tele-Afflicted
Straight grained, light, stiff and resonant. Sounds like desirable qualities in a wood for guitar.
All I can say is I play this all the time now while my '66 Strat gently weeps.
2HBStrat
Friend of Leo's
That isn't a blackguard...
tubedude
Tele-Afflicted
No, it's not.
Bravo!
4pickupguy
Doctor of Teleocity
Love paulownia for guitars!! Never going back. That’s beautiful!
2HBStrat
Friend of Leo's
Dostradamas
Tele-Afflicted
Looks fabulous
That nickel is the look.
One too many pickups for me
Is the cover on the neck pickup nickel as well? It seems to pop more in that pic than all the other metal.
Love the tint / color in the finish with that grain.
She is a beauty
That nickel is the look.
One too many pickups for me
Is the cover on the neck pickup nickel as well? It seems to pop more in that pic than all the other metal.
Love the tint / color in the finish with that grain.
She is a beauty
Stubee
Doctor of Teleocity
Nice!
Monoprice99
Tele-Meister
Meh, all a blackguard is, a single ply black pickguard (as opposed to a 3 ply with the white layer sandwiched like an Oreo, which is what I refer to a black-white-black 3 ply). It's also a original or reissue of the earlier 1950's as a Fender Telecaster that's been dubbed the blackguard (or whatever they were calling Telecasters by year to avoid a lawsuit). I have a blackguard blonde Monoprice TL style also have a whiteguard 3TSB Monoprice. A true blackguard is a bakelite pickguard as opposed to modern plastic(s). The bodies are pine, Alder wasn't used until later. Some pine species are harder than Alder, some softer for an average sample of dried out moisture content.
The history and mythology behind Fender's rare Blackguard Telecasters
Historic Hardware: Tele expert Richard diZerega walks us through the Blackguard era of Esquires, Broadcasters, Nocasters and Telecasters
www.guitarworld.com
2HBStrat
Friend of Leo's
The term "blackguard" refers to the very early Fender Telecasters, not to just any guitar with a black pickguard, whether Fender or not, especially those that are not Fender.Meh, all a blackguard is, a single ply black pickguard (as opposed to a 3 ply with the white layer sandwiched like an Oreo, which is what I refer to a black-white-black 3 ply). It's also a original or reissue of the earlier 1950's as a Fender Telecaster that's been dubbed the blackguard (or whatever they were calling Telecasters by year to avoid a lawsuit). I have a blackguard blonde Monoprice TL style also have a whiteguard 3TSB Monoprice. A true blackguard is a bakelite pickguard as opposed to modern plastic(s). The bodies are pine, Alder wasn't used until later. Some pine species are harder than Alder, some softer for an average sample of dried out moisture content.
The history and mythology behind Fender's rare Blackguard Telecasters
Historic Hardware: Tele expert Richard diZerega walks us through the Blackguard era of Esquires, Broadcasters, Nocasters and Telecasters
Discussing things intelligently requires using normal and accepted nomenclature.
Monoprice99
Tele-Meister
Not intending to be argumentative, I get the whole mystique of the Blackguard thing (1950-until the whiteguard became Fender standard issue. So was a blackguard a Single pickup Esquire, dual pickup Esquire ? Was it a Broadcaster/Nocaster or ultimately a Telecaster. It's essentially the modular Telecaster that Leo Fender "invented". Gretsch was the company that put a stop to the Broadcaster name, that didn't stop Fender from manufacturing them without a name, hence the term Nocaster. So basically, a Blackguard could be any of the 4, (Esquire => Broadcaster => Nocaster (Broadcaster with no headstock decal/name) => Telecaster.
Fender Telecaster - Wikipedia
The topic is under Partscasters, titled as the Blackguardian. So nobody is trying to pull a fake one past the world. I mean technically one could try to pass off a Nocaster with only a Fender decal & no model identification decal, just as easily as they could create a decal for Esquire, Broadcaster & Telecaster.
At the end of the day, what became Leo Fender's Telecaster was a R&D & Marketing process that was the modular bolt on neck to body, evolving int the classic 3-way switch from a 2 position switch that could be set in the middle as an unofficial selection that had no dedicated landing spot other than it would stay in that position to get the 2 pickup in or out of phase configuration. The internet is full of the Telecaster's history as best a journalist or anyone that was alive then or now can recollect/reconstruct. Leo Fender's intent for anything Fender was that the Telecaster was nothing more than a guitar, not a museum piece. The Stratocaster was Fender's next project. That's what the Telecaster enabled, slabs of different shapes for guitar models.
If the OP chooses to call his partscaster a Blackguardian, I've got no problem with it. I have 2 Monoprice Indio TL's, a blonde with a single ply black (that I refer to as my Blackguard), a 3TSB with a single ply white (that I also refer to as my Whiteguard, I probably end up putting a Mintguard on the 3TSB anyway). I have a Black Squier Affinity that I call Blackie, because it's really just an affordable Rosewood Clapton. And I also call my Bullet in Baltic Blue my Robert Cray because it specs like Robert Cray's Violet HT Strat, as chrome (Artist Series MiM) vs the Custom Shop gold. And here's the bonus, I have an Ovation Applause AE128 in Natural that I refer to as my Glen Campbell Dottie, because it basically is a Natural Glen Campbell Ovation with Dots for fret markers, save a couple of other design difference for truss rod adjustment location like the Squier Bullet's truss rod differs for location from the RC MiM (also the Bullet is a top loader not string thru body). There's always single cut vs no cut acoustic electric too.Getting back to the Monoprice TL's, I get they're Chinese TL's, but they're in the spirit of a TL build.
A final thought, you know Duane Allman had a 1957 gold top LP. The story goes, he recorded his tracks for Layla with that guitar. I grew up in Daytona Beach, FL, that Layla guitar was a $ 700 purchase in Gainesville, FL. 13 years after it was a brand new sale (1957-1970, after recording Layla at Criteria Studios in Miami, FL (as clueless as I was in time, I lived 2 miles door to door from that studio in North Miami Beach from 1997-2014). Anyway, Allman wanted to get a burst LP like Clapton had. He traded the gold top, a Marshall amp head & still paid the other guy $ 200 for a 1959 Burst LP like Clapton's at Peabody Auditorium. Here's the kicker, he removed the pickups from the gold top & kept those. At that point Layla was nothing more than a partscaster LP. More serial number verification, Layla was refurbished by Gibson. And then it became a music store loaner. More folks played that partscaster and nobody realized they were handling what would be a $ 1.25 million auction piece. I probably went to a bunch of music clubs and heard some bar band playing the Layla guitar as a rental ? I often wonder how many kids rented that guitar and had no idea of what they were holding in their hands as they quit the dream. Who knows, maybe I get struck by lightning. put it together for a one hit wonder and record a timeless part of an iconic song and then what do those Chinese Monoprice guitars become worth ? Maybe I just play bad music at home with it and they're only worth what the next aspiring musician will pay for it as his 1st guitar and at some point the Monoprice actually is part of history for an iconic hit song. Maybe it's like EVH Frankenstrat and is the slab of wood that tours.
Sorry for the long winded post. Just had to put it in perspective. Blackguardian looks like a Blackguard to me, probably one I can afford. In 70 years, the Covid pandemic guitars will also be 72 years old, original or partscaster.
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2HBStrat
Friend of Leo's
Just for the record, and FWIW, this thread was originally in the "Telecaster Discussion Forum" but was moved (by the mods?) to the "Other T-types and Partscasters" forum.
To me words mean something, or they should. The word "Blackguard" was never, afaik, used by Fender. It was just a term, like Burst, whiteguard, slab board, PAF, pre-CBS, nocaster, goldtop, clownburst, and many others used by guitar fans and dealers to more accurately describe the guitars they were dealing with. And that's where we are today. When someone says "I just bought a Nocaster" everyone who is into guitars knows exactly what they purchased. I know a guy who bought a recent Epiphone '59 Les Paul reissue. He calls it "my '59 Les Paul'...it's not.
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