Tele-less for twenty years, I finally decided I just had to have another Tele - know what I mean? Sometimes ya just gotta have THAT sound…

In the past, I’ve had several "standard" Teles, but this time I decided I’d try a thinline and put it together myself. So, what I wound up with is an "Internet" Tele. ALL of the original parts to assemble this guitar were purchased over the Internet, and the only real "Fender" part on the guitar is the bridge pickup.

The custom body I was able to find is mahogany, routed and carved from the back, and then capped (backed?). Originally, I had set it up with a MightyMite 22-fret strat neck, but (2/1/01) I switched it to a cheapy "import" replacement from Torres Engineering. Flat fingerboard, BIG frets! Now (6/1/02) I've installed a Warmoth "scale conversion" neck for this guy, in mahogany, to make it have a "Gibson" scale length. I also opted for the 1-11/16 nut width and the 6130 Gibson standard fret wire size... Oh boy! It has Grover Rotomatic tuners, and the other end anchors to a Stewmac heavy duty chromed brass bridge. The finishing touch - ha! I'll never FINISH messing with this guitar - was a Warmoth faux-tortoise shell pickguard

I picked up a set of pups on eBay that were represented as out of an American Standard Tele, and I later swapped the Fender neck pup out for a reverse-wound Reverend Strat pup to get a little (for me) more usable tone, as I found the neck pup from the AmStd set was just a tad too weak for my tastes. Now I have replaced that neck pup with a custom RW/RP Strat neck pup from Vintage Vibe Guitars that Pete Biltoft made for me - yeehaw!

I had originally set this guitar up with a push-pull pot to give me the pups in series - here's how to do this on ANY two pickup guitar, or two pups of a three-pup axe. Make yer Fender FAT!
I then switched over to the new Fender four-way pup switch to achieve the series sound, as I thought it was just a bit more sanitary than a push/pull setup.