Exhibit A The photo to the left is the gorgeous Custom Vintage Humbucker Telecaster Heavy Relic in Vintage Blonde, which has been taunting me from Music Zoo’s website for nearly a year.
I say “taunting” because there’s no way in hell I would personally pay Fender over $3,000 just to pre-age a guitar for me… but that said, this curvaceous beauty just keeps calling me back, and I’m finding it increasingly difficult to say no.
So what’s the next best thing, I ask? You guessed it––in the Grand American Spirit of destruction, experimentation, and good old “I-can-do-better-than-that-guy” chutzpah, I’ve decided to take a stab at creating my own Telecaster “Relic,” one piece of sand paper at a time… ooooh, you just know it’s gonna’ hurt.
And to be honest, while it would be great to walk away with an artistic masterpiece like the one above, my prime motivation for potentially demolishing a perfectly good Telecaster is really quite simple: it just sounds like fun!
Exhibit B And so we come to the “guinea pig” of our experiment… thanks to the magic of eBay, late last night I managed to purchase a slightly dinged Classic Player Baja Telecaster for what amounts to literally a song and a dance.
This is the much raved about MIM ’52 Tele Reissue, designed by the Fender Custom Shop and packed with modern niceties, like S1 switching, medium jumbo frets, a 9.5“ neck radius, and a pair of Custom Shop ’69 pickups.
And yes, that’s a poly finish, so I’ve got some heavy wet-sanding ahead of me… I can hardly wait.
The Players Luckily, through a bit of creative conniving I’ve managed to recruit the brains, beauty, and braun of a top secret partner-in-crime, whom will hereafter be referred to only as ”G.“
Between the two of us we should be able to manage most of the necessary requirements for artistically deconstructing an otherwise perfectly good guitar.
Timeline Who can really say… 60 days? 90 days? I haven’t a clue.
Resources Relic Deluxe, Guitar ReRanch, Callaham Guitars, Fender Custom Shop (for inspiration,) and of course Music Zoo.
Why You Should Care Because this whole ill-fated experiment is likely to turn into one giant train wreck, and who can resist the temptation to watch one of those?!
- EGR’s Great Tele Relic Experiment: The Poor Man’s Paint Room
- EGR’s Great Tele Relic Experiment: Heavenly Body
- EGR’s Great Tele Relic Experiment: And So The Work Begins…
- EGR’s Great “Tele Relic” Experiment: Our Guinea Pig Arrives
- EGR’s Great Tele Relic Experiment: Aging The Body, Adding Some Grime
- EGR’s Great Tele Relic Experiment: First Look At The Hardware
- EGR’s Great Tele Relic Experiment: Beatin’ The Hell Out Of That Pickguard
- EGR’s Great Tele Relic Experiment: Misadventures Of A Neck Surgeon!
April 25th, 2008 at 10:47 am
dude! mad props for attempting what i have been wanting to do myself for a very longtime. it really does seem like a fun thing to do, huh?
i will be watching this ‘experiment’ closely. i’ve got my fingers crossed for you.
April 25th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Hey thanks! Yea, I think it will be a helluva’ lot of fun, even if I completely screw it up :)
I’m not going for a so-called “heavy relic” look… just want to get that poly finish down to something a bit less plasticy and shiny, and age the plastic parts and hardware to take off that “brand spankin’ new” sparkle.
I love the idea of an instrument I don’t have to worry about dinging anymore!
April 25th, 2008 at 11:48 am
WHAT!!!
You’re going to ruin a perfectly good Tele… oh wait. You said MIM Tele..
carry on..
;)
April 25th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Cary,
It doesn’t seem any worse than what I plan to do with my G&L S-500, man.
Eddie
April 25th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Dude!!!!!!!!!!!!
April 25th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Hhmmmm, I am looking at my Strat right now wondering if I should pull out my sand paper… She’s saying, Nooooooo!
IG
April 25th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Hehe… no I would not recommend it IG. Unless you bought it on the cheap and specifically for this purpose! :)
April 25th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
This reminds me of buying levi 501′s back in the 80′s.. The first thing we did was rip em, then bleach em… Wallah! Aged 501′s and you where cool!
Good luck with that poly finish.. rent a sand blaster this weekend. Thats what I did :)
April 25th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Cary,
Awesome project! In the real world, when I’m not drooling over guitars, I’m the marketing guy for a company that makes autobody repair products (www.evercoat.com). So, if you go a little TOO far with that sandpaper, I can hook you up with some great filler and putty! ;)
April 25th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Cool project man. I’m wondering though, how do you age the plastic? Do you apply some sort of varnish remover type gook? And how do you sand around the switches without doing damage.
I imagine you’ll show us, I’m looking forward to the mechanics of that part.
April 26th, 2008 at 7:23 am
I’ll keep an eye on you, man! And try to document the process here, step by step! I was reading some guy’s website a few days ago where he tried a reversed process: bringing his guitar back to a new life! And he started to document it!
April 26th, 2008 at 8:51 am
Awesome Cary…. you’ve no doubt seen my thisoldguitar.net Relic Tele in the forums right? http://www.tubefreaks.net/vintage-guitars/78-my-new-tele.html#post384
Looks remarkably like the one you were lusting after…and was less than half the price for that exact same specs…although it does not say “Fender”
One huge word of caution if you haven’t found out already….MIM guitars with wood showing or a sunburst are really just alder wood with a “decal” for the wood print covered by the clear polyurethane finish. Only the true ash models are showing the real wood. There is a forum style website devoted to relic’ing that is really interesting…scared me away from doing it actually….I’ll dig it up.
Are you planning to strip the finish and refinish with nitro?
April 26th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Obviously…. you know about Relic Deluxe…http://www.relicdeluxe.com/ That wasn’t the site with the forum that scared me away.
I’m in the UK right now, and Google seems to work “differently” than it does back home. When I find the site, I’ll post it here.
April 26th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Thanks everybody :)
Rick, the Baja actually does have an Ash body, which is one of the reasons it is so popular even among those who hate the standard MIM stuff… of course that doesn’t guarantee it doesn’t use a decal ;) I guess we’ll find out!
April 26th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
I always wanted to have a crack at this sort of thing myself, so good luck, and lead on!
April 28th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Are you going to keep a running total of how much this whole project costs? That way we will know how much under the 3 grand mark you are. It would be interesting if you were on the verge of setting a trend, forcing Fender and other retro-fitting manufacturers to lower their prices a little. If you inadvertently get a ’62 Strat reissue in my hands for under a grand, I’ll build you a trophy.
April 28th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
I find it real sickening that both Fender and Epiphone/Gibson use ‘wood’ decals on their non-USA models and do not inform the buyer.