Here’s the tale of my Fender Made-in-Japan Telecaster: I purchased this guitar in 1996 in Hong Kong from the Tom Lee Music Annual Warehouse Clearance Sale. I didn’t find out about the sale up until the last day, so by the time I rocked as much as the leased factory system in the depths of Mong Kok, where they were holding the sale, there were just 2 guitars left: a damaged, low-cost acoustic and a made-in-Japan export design foto flame ’50s Telecaster.
As you can see from Image 1the guitar initially had a cherry sunburst surface on the body, however as it dated from ’94 and was among the first-run foto flames, it had a plain maple V-shaped neck and maple fretboard with vintage-sized stresses.
Initially, it had the low-end export electronic devices: bar-magnet pickups and dime-sized pots. I played it like this for 2 or 3 years, and after that I got the itch to update the pickups. I discovered a Seymour Duncan Jerry Donahue bridge pickup and a ’52 Fender reissue neck pickup, which I fitted.
Quickly after that, the tone pot broke down, so I purchased a set of U.S. CTS pots and fitted those. This involved reaming out the holes in the control plate to accommodate the a little bigger pot shafts. To do this, I utilized a round file and effort. About this time, I likewise got a set of brass bridge saddles to change the initial steel ones. The Telecaster Discussion Page Reissue online guitar online forum has a lot to address for.
Quick forward to about 2010, and the foto flame did what foto flame does: it began to break. As you can see in Photo 1, it got quite bad. I attempted to resolve it utilizing superglue, however that simply made matters worse.
A number of months earlier, I had simply had a regional luthier do some repair on a late ’60s Antoria Soundmaster. When he ‘d finished that, I asked if he might take the Tele and utilize veneer to appropriately accomplish the impact that the foto flame had actually initially accomplished. Well, he could not discover any good figured maple veneer in your area, however rather we chose some figured movingui and a tobacco sunburst surface base. Image 2 reveals the result.
While he was at it, he likewise changed the neck pickup cover with an open-topped cover exposing the polepieces, and a 4-way switch, offering series and parallel alternatives for the pickup mix. We figured that the initial white pickguard would not look that terrific with the brand-new surface, so I got both black and synthetic tortoise-shell guards from Musiclily, and after the refinish, we figured that the black guard looked the very best. The completed guitar can be seen in Photo 2. What can I state? It resembles having a brand-new guitar.
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Reader Guitar of the Month: Fender Made in Japan Telecaster posted first on https://www.twoler.com/
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