So yeah, gonna be getting a tele. It's happening.

I want the bound one.

If the sunburst were a nice three tone that'd be it, but this two tone one is kinda... ehh...?

So I can't decide if I want a black or a two tone. Pics:



Keep in mind I can easily change the pickguard colour down the road, if that serves to optimize the visual.

Yo guise it's a poll.

I like the burst with the binding. Smells of awesome sauce.

I like the black here, given the binding. The binding and the white edges on the pickguard are very classy against the maple board.

What is it about this place and Telecasters?

Black. Rondo finishes are almost never as good as the ones in the pictures (they aren't terrible, just the colors tend to be not as nice), and that burst is kinda eh all gussied up with good photography.

Black is classy, and hard to screw up.

On a related note, whenever I decide to get a LP (probably if I sell my Talman) I want one of these:

That is nice. I'm rather fond of the Tiger Eye, myself:



Though the purple quilt no inlays is acceptable to my (rather odd tastes) too.

I think I'm gonna go with the poop-burst.



This guy has it and my co workers say he sounds like me. Of course I have a Trawnno accent.

I am looking forward to obtaining it, playing it and feeling probably semi inspired, replacing some bits and having a sweet twangy beater!

You would be contradictory and start a poll, then go for the other one, wouldn't you?

But seriously: enjoy. Have you spent much time with Teles? If you can deal with single-coil hum, that bridge pickup loves some gain.

I'm with snaxie... Black on black with white details is sexy.



and Voxy amps

Really. What the hell, y'know? We are, I suppose, a bit contrarian in our tastes, generally. Not too many purists or genre s around these parts.

I am, of course, eagerly awaiting Geoff's stringing the Tele with 12s, tuning it to Bb, and slamming out some brutality on it. No, I'm serious. It would be cool for that.

I attribute the Vox/Tele thing to the fact that both things are kinda simultaneously ugly and pretty sounding, nothing gentle about either of those general tones unless you reign it in. Some people might find them sort of obnoxious, really. They are pretty bright tones, after all.

Actually I'm gonna get the black. Y'all got me convinced. If I want to tweak that axe (if it turns out to be worth tweaking) I might as well not have a finish that looks like spray paint...

I'm afraid I have no plans to tune it way low (but it might happen anyway, who knows), nor to go way-brutal with it, though it will definitely get hard rocked and maybe a little chuggy wuggy!

Lately I feel like despite the fact that I'm playing my most brutal boneheaded stuff yet with a band I want to break out of my comfy little paradigm and play something new. And I think bright, strong detailed sounds with a sharp attack are the ticket to some of that. Also, I think teles look sexy.

I'd love to make things that capture this vibe and feature layers and layers of guitar:
http://soundcloud.com/geoffhodsman/todgedrumjamiv
Some twangy, some smooth, some gained and some clear.

It's always been on the tip of my tongue, that I want to try something that branches off what I normally do into something new... something more like old drumjams I've done I guess. I'm really proud of how those turned out, particularly because they came from a place of pure creativity, no limitations imposed on myself.

After listening to A Deeper Kind of Slumber and really digging what they did I feel driven to make my own sort of weird rock. And to obtain telecasters. Kind of the catalyst to me trying something new (well we'll see if anything new really comes of it, especially when I'm so busy). I mean I heard it and I was like "this is GOOOOD. And so what I should be doing!"

I remember digging the hell out of that record when it was new. Those guys, Amorphis and Moonspell were big for me in the late '90s. That kind of stuff was an early catalyst for me to start exploring the connections between alt-rock and "real" metal- and I don't mean Soundgarden and Sabbath.

And that drumjam is very cool! I would listen to a record of that stuff.

Most of us don't have the time to do the drumjam thing like back in the day, eh? Kinda a shame.

But yeah, Teles: you will dig them, if you don't mind the neck profile. (I remember you having a Strat? Not much different.) The bridge pickup is an interesting animal; much more aggressive than a Strat, and very ballsy when it's been fed some gain. (Bonus feature: roll back the tone knob and they can do a passable Les Paul impression*. Being a big solid slab of something may help with that.) And yet it's a classic clean sound, too. The neck pickup- I modded mine for live work. If you want to get in there and tweak, note that most asymetrically-pickup'd Teles have a 'bucker or P90 (or a Strat pickup) in the neck vs. the bridge. Not that there's anything inherently bad about the Tele's neck pickup; it's definitely warmer and darker than a Strat, and again with the tone knob thing, though not an LP so much as just smooth tones you could play traditional jazz with.



You can poke someone's eye out with those things. They're also capable of just about the most beautiful clean tones with little to no effort. Wind them up a bit and they're snarling, brash things. But if you want it controlled just a bit, it turns into a tough rock riffing sound. Also, they're sorta quirky-simple yet versatile. If yer standard paradigm is Les Paul --> Marshall, they don't make a whole lot of operational sense.

*- See: Led Zeppelin II.

I was raised on strats, so I should be fine. Now apparently the necks on these SX teles are quite meaty, which interests me. My experience with thick necked guitars is that it audibly fattened the tone. They also have big frets apparently, which I dig.

My impression of teles is that they can make a very wide range of sounds, which are all still quite 'tele' in the end.

How did you mod your neck pickup for live work? I have always dug the concept of a shiny PAF in the neck spot of a tele, but I will give the stock type single a good run before I try something like that.

My main Strat and Tele have hefty necks and weighty bodies. They are not thin sounding guitars, and the people who've played 'em like what they deliver. (Even if they do find the string tension and high action awkward.) They seem to have fatter-than-average tones, to me, for what they are. I'll deal with the weight; I play bass, I don't care. Between this and the engineer Garda works with raving about the Agile LPs, that has me seriously thinking in a very opposite direction, with my money situation sorted-ish for now and if I'mma be rocking a modeler live.

They are very much their own thing. You can sort of passably fake a Tele with a Strat for the odd bit of clean stuff, though it takes some doing; it's more the family resemblance than anything else. The Tele's physical construction has a lot to do with it, I think. The bridge pickup has a brass baseplate and it's mounted into a big chunk of metal. The neck pickup, traditionally, has a chrome cover and a dark voicing, and is screwed to the body, which is a heavy slab of a thing, vs. a Strat which has had a ton of wood gouged out even in non-swimming pool form. The middle position bears little resemblance to 2 and 4 on a Strat.

I just took the pickup cover off. Easiest mod I've ever done; it took longer to unscrew the pickguard than anything. I cut the wire that grounds the cover, heated the thing up with a hairdryer- there was very little wax- and it slid right off. It does change things quite a bit. I wanted something more Strat-ish for live and didn't feel like buying a new pickguard or hacking away at the existing one to stuff the Strat pickup I have kicking around in there. That Tele is my main live guitar, and I didn't want to back and forth just 'cause I want a Strat neck pickup sound for cleans on songs where I need a heavy tone, too. It also allows me to not have to switch guitars depending on what's where in the set, as there's a few things I play on the neck exclusively. We switch enough stuff as it is, and if we're doing a shorter set we really try and minimize that.

Which is exactly what I was going to recommend Geoff do, as I do whenever somebody buys a tele.

Listen, I can appreciate a classic tele-neck-pickup sound. But seriously, pop the cover off. Some literally just pop off without any fuss. It really opens the pickup up, and release a lot of snap/twang which I think compliments the bridge pickup better. And if you roll off the tone knob (teles are the only guitars where I feel a tone knob is necessary and not just a nice feature) you can reclaim a lot of the covered sound anyway.

It also makes for a pretty sweet middle position tone.

Guys on this telecaster forum which I'm lurking are convinced that there is a 70% chance I'll slaughter the pickup if I try to remove it. But then they probably all have sausage-like farmer fingers, whereas I have the deft fingers of a chinese sweat shop slave.

I am looking forward to the darkened 'trademark' tele neck tones. In principle I want them, in application we'll just see. It's a bit more work but if I dislike the neck pickup I could put a strat pickup in...

The bound black geetar looks refined and doaply.

For a tobacco or 3-tone-style burst, i don't personally dig on bindingz.

The more I look at eh tele I think you made a good decision. I am liking less that edge burst, the burst on the LP looks tits though.