More tele upgrades

I’ve gotten a few more things done to the telecaster.  First, chrome knobs.  I never did care for the black ones that had been on it.  These ones came from a Squire P-Bass my brother picked up for a project, he was changing his knobs anyway so they would have just sat on a shelf, perfect!  Second, I’ve weighted the tail of the guitar (channel between tone control and output jack) with a few ounces of BB’s), fixed my neck dive issue.  Lastly, I have just installed a set of Guitar Fetish stainless steel saddles (made in Korea).  They are wicked!

old-tele-saddles

These are the Graph Tec saddles that came on the guitar, along with the brass adjustment screws I put in shortly after purchase.  Notice how they are splayed and the lower E string isn’t lined up with the pickup pole?  Yeah, that’s nice.  These are made for a standard width, not the narrow “Asian” width of the cheaper telecasters like mine.

new-tele-saddles

These are the new Guitar Fetish stainless steel saddles. This is the “modern” style that belongs on this guitar versus the “barrel” style someone swapped on before I bought the instrument.  Same old bridge, now my 10.5mm spacing is proper, see the lower E string lining up like it should?  Nice.  The strings actually fit at the lower end of the fret board without slipping off the edge too!

tele-beauty-shot

Beauty shot showing all the recent upgrades.

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What? It’s March!

-15F this morning…not kidding.

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Wicked cold out!

Yup, it’s been a wicked cold one this year.  Tuesday, February 24, 2015 we had a low of -24.2F here in Norridgewock, ME.  Yeah, that’s wicked cold.

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Rock ‘n Roll

Vaughn and I have a standing father/son time every weekend in the morning playing guitar.  Recently he has started to play with me, clicking the button on an old stomp box I made back in college.  This morning I decided to try my hand at some Siravo.  So I tuned down to drop C, cranked the overdrive to 11 on my little K-20X, flipped down to my bridge pickup on the tele, and did my best to keep up.  Vaughn was impressed, quickly telling me that it “sounds like rock ‘n roll, daddy!”  That made me smile.

I did quickly learn that I need to practice my rock rhythm guitar chops badly and that it is also very unlikely I will fill in for rhythm duty in the Siravo lineup any time soon.  But, little mister and I had a blast doing it, and we filled the house with obnoxious guitar noise like I was in high school again.  Good times.

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Fralin Tele Splits

Someday I’m going to upgrade my tele, and when I do, it will have these cool Fralin’s on it:

Mockup: Affinity Telecaster with Fralin Tele Split-Blade Pickups

Mockup: Affinity Telecaster with Fralin Tele Split-Blade Pickups

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