Tele Thinline, Bigsby, three-pickup very special - How to?

[anthrotony]

Hi everyone,

OK, I NEED a new Tele. I think. No I do, I really NEED one.

I still play my first guitar bought in 1973, Gibson SG Special. Then in 2000 I bought a dream, ES-335. Other dream was a strat, so after trying out dozens a few months later, I drove home with an American Standard TELE! It was my go-to guitar until two years ago when I bought a mint 2002 G&L Legacy - finally my "strat". Hard to choose between the two. Oh, for some unfathomable reason a few years ago I bought a Peerless Tonemaster JH Special archtop with three Gibson dogear P90s. Only the Tele and Legacy really please me right now. And as it seems that most Tele-lovers MUST have more than one Tele, it is easy to self-justify my "need", and perhaps some of you could tell me what would be a good alternative Tele if I were just to add another ??

But then I saw a video on the D'Angelico Bob Weir Premier Bedford. Very cool.

Here in the EU I can buy one for around £700 or go for the Deluxe version for about twice that. Then I saw Darrell Braun's video on putting filtertrons in a Thinline Tele --

Very Nice.

So I got to thinking about a Thinline Tele with Bigsby with two Filtertrons and either a P90 or a Single Coil in the middle. How cool might that be? I know that it's possible to find a Cabronita, but it's not quite what I'm looking for. So my first thought was to design a custom body and neck with Warmoth, but I quickly passed $700 for the body and nearly $500 for the neck, but that was still without any way of mounting the Bigsby that I could find, as well as certainly needing some additional routing for appropriate electronics. I'm thinking of staying as faithful to the Thinline as possible, while incorporating a 5-way switch plus some way of blending as used by the D'Angelico. I haven't estimated it out properly, but I'm guessing I'd quickly get up to $2000 to assemble this guitar! Oh, I guess I'd also consider another Fender offset style body, but that wouldn't be a Tele at all.

I have no idea if Warmoth (or other builders') bodies and necks are better than say MIM guitars, and so I'm wondering if my project would be better served by starting with finding a used MIM model that would allow the appropriate mods to achieve what I'm looking for. I'm guessing it would be way cheaper! Of course it could take a long while to find the ideal starter guitar based on look, feel etc.

I'd really appreciate anything you guys can offer as suggestions for this (insane?) project that I can't get out of my head! Thanks a bunch.

 

[Deeve]

This project sounds good - I'm not a real tele purist (see sortacaster in avatar) but I appreciate the spirit of tele and like the many variations found by mod enthusiasts).
Go-cat-go
and report back.
Peace - Deeve

 

[anthrotony]

I hated Teles until I loved one. That doesn't mean I'd like others as I honestly haven't had a chance to play them, but there must be something that makes Tele players become multiple Tele players right? Why else would someone (like Darrell Braun) have a dozen or more of essentially the same guitar? In my case, of course I could just get a Deluxe with humbuckers, but I think I have that covered pretty well with an SG and 335? So is this the beginning of a another quest - perhaps down yet another rabbit hole?

Still hoping others might chime in with ideas for either a good starter MIM Tele to start with, or if it's worth all that extra dough to go the Warmoth-type build route!