Absolutely love Telecaster tones but can't stand the flat plank body. Alternatives?

[jeremy]

Re: Absolutely love Telecaster tones but can't stand the flat plank body. Alternative

You can get a lot of different tones from any one guitar......you could even get an Ibanez heavy metal guitar fit it with new pickups.....then depending on your amp/pedal setup you could easily get the tele sound!

I'm also selling my Ibanez S-series 520 for £300 with a hard case!

You could replace the pickups, it is a fantastic guitar, i absolutely love the small body, they are light and have a fantastic neck for smooth playing!

I can probably do you that for £285 free delivery!

there is no way youll get respectable tele like tones from anything with a trem like that. obviously its up to the op how much "tele" he wants in the tone, but an ibanez s520 even with a set of great tele pups isnt going to sound anything like a tele.

 

[vinnie1971]

Absolutely love Telecaster tones but can't stand the flat plank body. Alternatives?

Cool, I would love to have a custom built guitar exactly as it is in my mind, but no budget for that

Believe it or not mine was about the price of a Squier standard Tele! I put the pickups in and wired it but the Body and neck were custom made.

Also check AliExpress I hit this made for the price of an affinity Squier and it’s very well made. I swapped out the pickups though

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[maup]

Re: Absolutely love Telecaster tones but can't stand the flat plank body. Alternative

I'm also selling my Ibanez S-series 520 for £300 with a hard case!

You could replace the pickups, it is a fantastic guitar, i absolutely love the small body, they are light and have a fantastic neck for smooth playing!

I can probably do you that for £285 free delivery!

Thank for the offer I'm sure it's a nice guitar but not my style. Looking for a Tele with contours or even a cheap Strat but anyway I'm not going to buy it right now, mine is more a mid-long term project for now, I'm collecting information.

 

[maup]

Re: Absolutely love Telecaster tones but can't stand the flat plank body. Alternative

Believe it or not mine was about the price of a Squier standard Tele! I put the pickups in and wired it but the Body and neck were custom made.

Also check AliExpress I hit this made for the price of an affinity Squier and it’s very well made. I swapped out the pickups though

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Cool guitar too!

I'm a bit afraid to get Chinese parts because I had some unpleasant experience, especially for the quality control. I got some parts that were routed really badly with wrong angles etc...

 

[donaldr]

Re: Absolutely love Telecaster tones but can't stand the flat plank body. Alternative

Thanks, I didn't know about them, looks good although too much "metal" for me, I would like to try one but no shops has them around where I am.

I tried an older LTD TE-212 some 3-4 years ago, not metal at all. Return the week after to buy it but was gone. I have an LTD ST-213 (Strat copy) and the (ESP) pickups are vintage output (like 5.75k).

 

[Ayrton]

Re: Absolutely love Telecaster tones but can't stand the flat plank body. Alternative

The best Teles sound like Les Pauls and the best Les Pauls sound like Teles

 

[jimilee]

Absolutely love Telecaster tones but can't stand the flat plank body. Alternatives?

Bacon has no place on a donut.
I want to join the random thoughts that are going on here. I love a tele sound with or without humbuckers, I have on or more of each.

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[Obsessive Compulsive]

Re: Absolutely love Telecaster tones but can't stand the flat plank body. Alternative

I'm also selling my Ibanez S-series 520 for £300 with a hard case!

You could replace the pickups, it is a fantastic guitar, i absolutely love the small body, they are light and have a fantastic neck for smooth playing!

I can probably do you that for £285 free delivery!

Your sales pitch is very classy. But the only way to elicit that twangy tele tone is by a guitar with tele shape and tele pickups. Believe it or not I get that twang even when it's unplugged.

 

[Ayrton]

Re: Absolutely love Telecaster tones but can't stand the flat plank body. Alternative

Bacon has no place on a donut.

Wrong

Bacon goes with everything

 

[ehdwuld]

Re: Absolutely love Telecaster tones but can't stand the flat plank body. Alternative

Wrong

Bacon goes with everything

I tried it with chocolate ice cream

Them two got in my belly and went round n round
They didn't like each other at all

 

[Phantasmagoria]

Re: Absolutely love Telecaster tones but can't stand the flat plank body. Alternative

$99.00 Solution?

 

[maup]

Re: Absolutely love Telecaster tones but can't stand the flat plank body. Alternative

What about this? Do you have any experience with Cort? It looks nice and it is like $400 in online shops.

They say it's designed in collaboration with Hugh Manson Guitar Works (R)

https://www.cortguitars.com/product/item.php?ca_id=101050&it_id=1159&page=1#tab_Video

 

[Desmond_G_Baggins]

Re: Absolutely love Telecaster tones but can't stand the flat plank body. Alternative

If you feel like treating yourself and spending extra the more recent runs of the american made Fender Teles have been putting on belly carves and i think arm carves not sure with the classic fender look. But if you want the kind of radiohead tele like in the picture that might be slightly harder because if i'm corect that was a limited run from the late 80s to mid 90s that literally because the radiohead guy had one made the prices skyrocket. also had a special bridge where it had a hard tail strat style bridge and a special made mounting plate about a quarter inch away with special lace sensor pickups and his had the togle switch replaces with a button style kill switch. If you do want that radio head style guitar the Fender Player Tele (about 600+ USD NEW) has a similar bridge set up so extra routing is not needed and similar tele plates are fairly easy to find. If you just want a well made tele style chapman is a great bet and if you don't like the stock hardware they are basically designed to be modded should you feel like doing so. But my honest personal reccomendation is buy a used mexican tele and just pay a little extra to have some one sand the carves in. Because A. If you buy a new one first owner never gets what they want selling it. And B. People would get less infuriated if you should decide to super mod it and have a super modded used MIM as opposed to a mega moded MIA or other brand like G&L whre modding G&L guitars is almost like a sin because of how they became such a cult classic because it's Leo Fenders last work. And also just buying used mid priced guitars alwaysis alot cheaper

 

[elelpe]

Re: Absolutely love Telecaster tones but can't stand the flat plank body. Alternative

What about this? Do you have any experience with Cort? It looks nice and it is like $400 in online shops.

They say it's designed in collaboration with Hugh Manson Guitar Works (R)

It plays well. You need to replace the pickups though, IMO. Not as brilliant as classic tele sound.
And there's also Ibanez Talman:

 

[maup]

Re: Absolutely love Telecaster tones but can't stand the flat plank body. Alternative

And there's also Ibanez Talman:

Wow that Ibanez is really cool!! Actually I saw this guitar on a few YouTube videos but I could not find any information on the Ibanez official web site. Is it a discontinued model? Thank you for giving me the name so I can search for some used ones.
About the pickups, I am anyway thinking to go for noiseless solution so I would anyway change them.

 

[elelpe]

Re: Absolutely love Telecaster tones but can't stand the flat plank body. Alternative

You're welcome. Yeah, unfortunately the model only lasted for two years, 2016 - 2018. I believe you can still find one easily.

 

[Francois]

Re: Absolutely love Telecaster tones but can't stand the flat plank body. Alternative

My 1978 Tele has a belly cut because it is a Deluxe...

a pity actually : I loose a few grams of alder in the body and its large headstock is too heavy.

 

[maup]

Re: Absolutely love Telecaster tones but can't stand the flat plank body. Alternative

You're welcome. Yeah, unfortunately the model only lasted for two years, 2016 - 2018. I believe you can still find one easily.

I found some of them for around €450 but in "sparkling" blue or red which I don't like very much.
Then later I tried to find more on line and I found one NEW tri fade sunburst on reverb.com for €299+10 for shipping in my country, wow! I got it with no hesitation and can't wait to receive it!
Thanks again for the recommendation!

 

[Dave Locher]

Re: Absolutely love Telecaster tones but can't stand the flat plank body. Alternative

I hope you love it! I always thought they were cool (they were a model back in the 1980s or early '90s - the new ones were throwbacks to those).

 

[donaldr]

Re: Absolutely love Telecaster tones but can't stand the flat plank body. Alternative

I found some of them for around €450 but in "sparkling" blue or red which I don't like very much.
Then later I tried to find more on line and I found one NEW tri fade sunburst on reverb.com for €299+10 for shipping in my country, wow! I got it with no hesitation and can't wait to receive it!
Thanks again for the recommendation!

Wow!!! But you need a tortoise pickguard (old joke from Talkbass.com)