I watched a few videos on Joe Bonnamassa playing Telecasters with at least one humbucker.
When I shared the video with Mom, she piped up, "You know, Son, we should send him that red Humbucker Von Herndon Custom you built and gave to me! I bet he would play the dickens outta that thing!"
(Mom is a huge Joe Bonnamassa fan)
Indeed, I think that Joe B. might not consider my blending of Les Paul and Telecaster sonic sacrilege as many have.
When I put the idea together for a maple/mahogany/maple, set neck, 24.75" scale, twin humbucker Tele-style guitar, back in 2015, I thought it was the perfect blend of two iconic guitars. But, I was surprised (then, but not now) that the purists in both camps just unloaded such a vicious attack on the concept.
So, in the end, my foolish business venture netted 27 guitars produced. The double neck was the 27th and final fool's folly, and this 24.75" scale Stratocaster was my first ever attempt at building a guitar:
I even patented a headstock design to legitimize the guitars as there is no trademark restriction on the Telecaster body shape; only the headstock shape and tradename:
The sketch above evolved into this:
And ultimately turned out like this:
I contracted the cutting of the necks and bodies with B.Hefner in Wnittier, California.
Once shaped, B.Hefner did all the routing, installed the truss rod, attached the fretboard, set the inlay dot markers and sawed the fret slots. I had B.Hefner install the neck binding on the first 5 guitars, but after that, I got some training in how to install binding and tried my hand at that too.
The neck is what I called a "log" because of the 1.00" profile, but its basically a cross between a '58 Les Paul and a Fender U profile, but in 24.75" scale:
I set the necks here at home (we had a workshop in our previous home back then and I also used equipment in a friendly local luthier's shop) and then returned them to B.Hefner to have the bridges and nut slots laid out in their CNC machine.
The nice thing about B.Hefner was I could drive there when I needed something and their staff was very helpful in sorting out problems, based on my inexperience.
The bodies were then dyed (all the maple tops were finished in a transparent color) with products I bought from Stewie-Mac. The first 5 guitars had waterslide headstock decals. After that, I had a local guy with a "Cricut" machine make me stencils, and I just sprayed the logo/serial on with white, black, red, silver or gold paint, depending on the color scheme.
I used U-Pol as a final finish. I literally had to let theses bodies hang up and dry several weeks before they could be sanded and polished out.
The heel has a fairly comfortable, rounded profile, but in retrospect, it could have been much better.
All in all, they turned out pretty nice for a beginner and each one got better and better. Several are working with Los Angeles based musicians, a few with private players, at least one is a studio rental and Country/Rockabilly Virtuoso Marty Stuart owns the one on the right:
All are fully shielded. The standard humbuckers were the Artec Classic Standard Bridge (A2 magnet 7.5k) and the Artec 59 Neck, but many were fitted with custom pickups based on the client's requirements.
All were delivered with Schaller Straplocks and Schaller locking tuners, based simply on popularity.
Standard controls are single volume, single tone, 3-way switch with a coil tap. Some were produced with the Jimmy Page 21 Tone Modification. Standard tone capacitors were.0.0.01uf, but I also used a lot of 0.022uf orange drops and bumblebees by request.
In consideration of sending one of these to Joe Bonnamassa, I've decided to make a few changes:
1. We recently milled out a set of Stainless Steel Bridge saddles for my YelloStrat. I used brass instead. I'm going to install the stainless saddles on this guitar.
2. I have a Gibson Wildwood PAF that I want to put in the bridge. It's about 7.7k AlNico 2.
3. I want to add a push/pull pot to give the 'Peter Green out of phase effect in the middle position.
4. I want to use my recently developed skills in re-profiling the nut slots to give them an 'hourglass' shape for better tuning stability.
5. Install roller string trees.
6. Set up to Joe's specs of .090" bass side and .080" treble side with Joe's widely know preference of Ernie Ball .010" x .048" on his 25.5" scale guitars.
I'm thinking this is gonna be a fun project and I have everything in stock, even the push/pull, 550k CTS pots.
Just gotta get back up to Mom's place and pick it up....
Do you think Joe B. will approve, or view the guitar as a sacrilege???
When I shared the video with Mom, she piped up, "You know, Son, we should send him that red Humbucker Von Herndon Custom you built and gave to me! I bet he would play the dickens outta that thing!"
(Mom is a huge Joe Bonnamassa fan)
Indeed, I think that Joe B. might not consider my blending of Les Paul and Telecaster sonic sacrilege as many have.
When I put the idea together for a maple/mahogany/maple, set neck, 24.75" scale, twin humbucker Tele-style guitar, back in 2015, I thought it was the perfect blend of two iconic guitars. But, I was surprised (then, but not now) that the purists in both camps just unloaded such a vicious attack on the concept.
So, in the end, my foolish business venture netted 27 guitars produced. The double neck was the 27th and final fool's folly, and this 24.75" scale Stratocaster was my first ever attempt at building a guitar:
I even patented a headstock design to legitimize the guitars as there is no trademark restriction on the Telecaster body shape; only the headstock shape and tradename:
The sketch above evolved into this:
And ultimately turned out like this:
I contracted the cutting of the necks and bodies with B.Hefner in Wnittier, California.
Once shaped, B.Hefner did all the routing, installed the truss rod, attached the fretboard, set the inlay dot markers and sawed the fret slots. I had B.Hefner install the neck binding on the first 5 guitars, but after that, I got some training in how to install binding and tried my hand at that too.
The neck is what I called a "log" because of the 1.00" profile, but its basically a cross between a '58 Les Paul and a Fender U profile, but in 24.75" scale:
I set the necks here at home (we had a workshop in our previous home back then and I also used equipment in a friendly local luthier's shop) and then returned them to B.Hefner to have the bridges and nut slots laid out in their CNC machine.
The nice thing about B.Hefner was I could drive there when I needed something and their staff was very helpful in sorting out problems, based on my inexperience.
The bodies were then dyed (all the maple tops were finished in a transparent color) with products I bought from Stewie-Mac. The first 5 guitars had waterslide headstock decals. After that, I had a local guy with a "Cricut" machine make me stencils, and I just sprayed the logo/serial on with white, black, red, silver or gold paint, depending on the color scheme.
I used U-Pol as a final finish. I literally had to let theses bodies hang up and dry several weeks before they could be sanded and polished out.
The heel has a fairly comfortable, rounded profile, but in retrospect, it could have been much better.
All in all, they turned out pretty nice for a beginner and each one got better and better. Several are working with Los Angeles based musicians, a few with private players, at least one is a studio rental and Country/Rockabilly Virtuoso Marty Stuart owns the one on the right:
All are fully shielded. The standard humbuckers were the Artec Classic Standard Bridge (A2 magnet 7.5k) and the Artec 59 Neck, but many were fitted with custom pickups based on the client's requirements.
All were delivered with Schaller Straplocks and Schaller locking tuners, based simply on popularity.
Standard controls are single volume, single tone, 3-way switch with a coil tap. Some were produced with the Jimmy Page 21 Tone Modification. Standard tone capacitors were.0.0.01uf, but I also used a lot of 0.022uf orange drops and bumblebees by request.
In consideration of sending one of these to Joe Bonnamassa, I've decided to make a few changes:
1. We recently milled out a set of Stainless Steel Bridge saddles for my YelloStrat. I used brass instead. I'm going to install the stainless saddles on this guitar.
2. I have a Gibson Wildwood PAF that I want to put in the bridge. It's about 7.7k AlNico 2.
3. I want to add a push/pull pot to give the 'Peter Green out of phase effect in the middle position.
4. I want to use my recently developed skills in re-profiling the nut slots to give them an 'hourglass' shape for better tuning stability.
5. Install roller string trees.
6. Set up to Joe's specs of .090" bass side and .080" treble side with Joe's widely know preference of Ernie Ball .010" x .048" on his 25.5" scale guitars.
I'm thinking this is gonna be a fun project and I have everything in stock, even the push/pull, 550k CTS pots.
Just gotta get back up to Mom's place and pick it up....
Do you think Joe B. will approve, or view the guitar as a sacrilege???
