Somewhere along the line, this Tele was modded with a Bigsby and a wide-range humbucker. The current owner liked the guitar overall, but not the sound of the neck pickup. So we installed a Lollar Special T in the bridge position and a Lollar Imperial humbucker in the neck position. Because of the smaller size of the new neck pickup, we mounted it in a chrome pickup bezel and it looks great. I find it hard to look away from this orange soda/dreamsicle-looking guitar.

Okay Tele Deluxe fans, what looks different on this guitar? And no, we don’t mean the flower tattoo.

That’s right! It’s the……Strat style tremolo! Not what we’re used to seeing on these guitars at all.

Neither of us had ever seen one of these in person and had to look it up to double check it’s authenticity. But sure enough, Fender made a few of these guitars in the early/mid 1970’s. The flower tattoo is the only non-original feature you see on this guitar. Boy, did it sound great after The Works set-up and a little clean up of the electronics.

Subscribe to this blog or just check back in soon. We’ve got some very interesting repairs happening in the shop and we’ll show them to you here as soon as I get enough time to post them!

For a variety of reasons, some folks just prefer old guitars. Maybe it’s the neck, worn smooth by years of handling. Maybe it’s the checked and cracked finish that looks like granddad’s old tube radio. Maybe it’s just the charm of something that’s played some music in its time. Or maybe it’s the fact that vintage guitars’ values are reliably and steadily rising – making them a good investment. But some of us can’t find or afford our real dream guitar. So at Chicago Fret Works, we’ve developed a relic process that will simulate aging in a guitar, giving it the look and feel but not the pricetag of a genuine vintage piece.

In this case, the dream guitar is a 1952 Fender Telecaster; the actual guitar is a 2008 Fender 52 Reissue Hot Rod Tele. That guitar looks something like this when brand new:

The Seymour Duncan mini-humbucker notwithstanding, this guitar is made to the specs of an original 52 Tele, including a nitrocellulose lacquer finish, nickel hardware, maple fretboard, and “ashtray” style bridge. These features make it an ideal candidate for a relic job because we don’t really need to replace any parts or completely refinish the guitar before we get started. A poly-coated guitar with modern chrome hardware can be distressed and banged up, but not with the authentic look of nitro and nickel. (If you’re not sure which variety your guitar is, don’t worry. We’ll help you figure it out.)

Here’s how it looked when we were finished:

What’s the opposite of the Fountain of Youth?… We think we’ve found it here.

Here’s a ’60s reissue Strat that Dan gave the full relic treatment to. The vintage reissues work particularly well for this kind of project because the truss rod is accessed at the body end rather than the headstock, as it was during those years. It’s one detail that would be a dead giveaway if it were wrong.

While Fender makes the truss rod true to the period, some of the other treatments these guitars receive at the factory are different from the original. So we took more authentic hardware and parts and distressed them to look like they are 45 years old. Then we completely removed the factory poly finish and applied a more authentic lacquer finish in Sonic Blue.

Notice the bit of red peeking through on the upper arm area? That’s not a mistake. Occasionally in the 50’s and 60’s the factory would be unhappy with a finish job in one color and so re-finish it in another. After years of wear, the original color starts to peek through.

After drying, the finish gets distressed as well and here we are with a guitar that has the true look and feel of a ‘62 Strat, but without the $40,000 price tag. Nice work, Dan.