Well here it is, in all of its strange, b-bending, 5-way switching, interbreeding junkyard glory. Perhaps the strangest guitar I've ever played and I'm very excited to see what it becomes.
The thing has been sitting in the previous owner's home studio mostly untouched for quite a while and it's really begging for a proper setup. First thing I'll say is it definitely feels like playing an "experiment". The neck appears to be from a Japanese Squier Strat and I imagine it was thrown on only because it was available at the time, not by preference. There's a lot of friction left with this finish and paired with the rosewood fretboard on the other side I'm finding it quite difficult to move around the neck with ease. The action is significantly higher than I'd like and over time the strings have really carved into the 3 brass barrels at the bridge, unfortunately in the wrong positions, so the last 2 strings are further spaced than the rest. Saddle heights seem very oblong, a few strings are raised awkwardly higher than their neighbors. The intonation is probably pretty nasty but I haven't checked. It does stay in tune better than I expected but could still really benefit from a new set of tuners on a new neck, in this condition I'm tuning after every song.
But all of that being said, I drove straight to the guitar store after buying it, walked straight to the amp room, and cranked it through a '65 Deluxe Reverb for almost 45 minutes. I absolutely love this combination of pickups, very clear sound and the Teiscos have such a unique voice, a punchy sort of chirp that really compliments the classic twangy Tele bridge pickup. So fortunately the unique qualities of this beast go far beyond its absurd hardware, it definitely has a voice that is entirely its own, I won't be swapping out these pickups any time soon.
Using the B-bender is going to take some getting used to but I'm already having a hell of a lot of fun with it. It adds a ton of personality to open chords, kind of like the swooning bends in Zeppelin's
Rain Song but subtler and more integrated into the root sound of each chord, very excited to start incorporating it into our music. Going to have to track down some lessons on using it with leads, steel guitar style solos on my horizon.
So overall I'm very happy with the purchase and entirely expected it to require some restoration / upgrades, that's primarily the reason I wanted it, it's a fantastic template for building something quite remarkable. I love the B-bender system, I adore the pickup combination and having a 5-way selector, I'll be talking to the local guitar tech this weekend about getting the bridge re-filed for proper string positioning, I'll see if he has any decent necks laying around, if not I'll order a premium custom neck from Warmoth, and I'm replacing the ugly epoxied plastic knobs with standard chrome Telecaster knobs at lunch break today.
The **** you find on Craigslist.
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