Frankentele

The guitars I collect are mostly “player” guitars, which are modified in some way making them less than collector guitars. I prefer these, as I can PLAY them! Not sit around in some climate controlled room cackling madly, drinking port, and admiring my shrewdness. The “frankentele” is no exception.

When I was managing Wurlitzer music in Framingham, some guy I knew wanted to trade his tele for my 50 watt Marshall head. The tele was an off white refinished 66 fender telecaster, with a 1963 stratocaster neck, which had been “radiuses” almost flat, I said sure!

I was playing in a band called numbers at the time, and stuck little kids stick on black numbers all over the damn thing. It had a humbucking pick up in the bridge position, so was routed under the black pick guard, I loved it! Damn Rhind wouldn’t go out of tune ever……( go to YouTube and see it up close and personal in numbers video “lay your money down” ) after numbers disbanded ( shocking!)

I took it to Eddie Murray the famed guitar tech at Wurlitzer (since passed away) who did all the work for jeff beck, they both loved cars, and were the same height ( short) and asked him to do a butterscotch refin, and put a regular tele pick up in the neck position. He basically did it for free, so cosmetically, it wasn’t perfect, but it did the job. He said the wood was so crappy, he had to do a darker finish, he did say it was one of the lightest tells he had worked on.

I used this tele on every recording I have ever done. It always seemed the go to guitar when we were having trouble getting a great vibe on a track. The flat radius allows ridiculous bends, and the rosewood neck seems to calm that penetrating glassy tele sound, it would be awesome in a bar fight too! The fans actually nicknamed it the frankentele, one of my fav’s, for all the above reasons.