Re: Decided to keep her
Ohhh I love stinky!!! That's a beautiful guitar.
Bwahahahahaha !
Sorry ... I just never heard anyone call Stinky 'beautiful' before. The guitar (it's gender has never made itself apparent) is a heck of a lot of things, but beauty has never appeared to be one of them. Certainly not in the conventional sense anyway.
A mate of mine bought it s/h in Sydney around 1978/9. In 1982 he sold it to me for AU$150 (maybe $100 US) ... back then, it had the original black pickguard and control layout (2V/ 2T, pup selector on top bout like a LP), original 3-colour burst (thick poly) and the original case. But it had been fitted with a Gibson tailpiece and TuneOmatic bridge (3-bolt neck had the tilt adjustment to get the strings high enough at the bridge). As soon as i got it, i took those off and fitted a replacement Tele-like bridge ... curiously there were no holes through the body, so i drilled them by hand ... the ferrules at the back are all higgledy-piggledy, hehe.
(I discovered many years later that this had been a factory Bigsby version, hence no string holes through the body).
To stop the neck moving around, i drilled an extra two holes through the neck plate so the neck is held rigid with five screws. Over the years it's had various necks and bridges. It's long-settled now with a 1980s Tele neck and a genuine Fender bridgeplate with the cutaway side. Sweat killed the original bridge pickup, there's a Fralin in there now but it's a bit too 'polite' and i need to find something closer to the original, which was great, esp. for the CBS era ... it was a bitey,sting-y and rude sound.
In the late '80s i made the new pickguard to work in the ways that best suited the way i used the guitar, although i plan to restore it to the black, LP layout/look. Maybe 6 years ago i stripped the thick poly off, what you see now is whatever the goop is Fender used as a filler/sealer. The wood darkened (yellowed) noticeably even in the first year after i took the poly finish off.
Stinky has been with me for over 33 years now and has gigged with me all up and down the eastern side of Australia. It's been hurled across rooms, rammed through stage floors and the front of speaker cabinets, fallen over, bitten, stepped on, and goodness-knows what else. But it just keeps on going, and sounding great. For the last 20 years it's had a more gentle life as we've aged together. When it's been in for fretwork, I've always been ashamed to show the luthier, but they have always admired it's honesty. Despite everything, I love this guitar and will never part with it.
Sorry to derail your thread, it's just difficult to post a pic of ol' Stinky without having to explain it.
I'm wondering what kind of finish you've used on yours, and whether exposure to daylight will cause it to darken, or whether your finish has UV inhibitors that will keep the body looking the same is it is now.
I thought this pic might give you some idea of how yours will look with a maple neck, although yours will have the 'shiny, new' version of the Look, Stinky has the 'aged' version of the same look.
Yeah, the tummy cut is a good idea ... i don't think i could ever do it to Stinky because ... I dunno, the stubborn old plank diggin' in to my scrawny chest is a part of what Stinky is, the splintered edges catching on my clothes, hehe ... it's all part of Stinky's idiosycratic 'charm'. But for any other Tele, the tummy cut is very useful.
We'll look forward to seeing how yours is when you get her completed.
sorry again for the derail ....
