RLangham98
Tele-Holic
I got to play a very... let's say venerable tele today. I was told it was a 60's but I have no idea if that was true or if it was even an original guitar and not a partscaster. The Fender logo was nearly gone but the hardware all seemed 60's correct at a cursory inspection.
It had suffered a lot of abuse. Aside from being completely refin'd at some point it had been converted to two humbuckers and back... allegedly the original bridge was back on it but the pickguard isn't original. Whatever its paint job was was completely gone and replaced with decent looking transparent finish, not new by any means.
But what struck me was that the top had definitely been planed or shaved down by more than a couple mm. The neck appeared to be sitting fully flat in the pocket, but the fingerboard was very high off the top and a lot of the truss rod adjustment was visible over the pickguard. The saddles were correspondingly raised almost to their limits. If I had to guess I'd say the fingerboard may have been like 7/16" off the top of the guitar. For all that, it did play very nicely.
The owner kept trying to hard sell it to me glossing over its flaws, not that I could remotely afford it, but once he stepped away, the employee agreed that it had clearly been shaved down and he said he thought that was very common at one time during the age when old teles were practically worthless. FWIW if I got a very good deal on such an instrument I think the only thing that would bother me was the board radius... but even that I think I could come to love. Despite the abuse it was a beautiful tele with great patina on the neck.
Was this just done for weight relief? How common was this?
It had suffered a lot of abuse. Aside from being completely refin'd at some point it had been converted to two humbuckers and back... allegedly the original bridge was back on it but the pickguard isn't original. Whatever its paint job was was completely gone and replaced with decent looking transparent finish, not new by any means.
But what struck me was that the top had definitely been planed or shaved down by more than a couple mm. The neck appeared to be sitting fully flat in the pocket, but the fingerboard was very high off the top and a lot of the truss rod adjustment was visible over the pickguard. The saddles were correspondingly raised almost to their limits. If I had to guess I'd say the fingerboard may have been like 7/16" off the top of the guitar. For all that, it did play very nicely.
The owner kept trying to hard sell it to me glossing over its flaws, not that I could remotely afford it, but once he stepped away, the employee agreed that it had clearly been shaved down and he said he thought that was very common at one time during the age when old teles were practically worthless. FWIW if I got a very good deal on such an instrument I think the only thing that would bother me was the board radius... but even that I think I could come to love. Despite the abuse it was a beautiful tele with great patina on the neck.
Was this just done for weight relief? How common was this?
