The Big Kahuna

Quick... which pickup has more power on your Telecaster? Which one gives the Tele it's distinctive sound? The distinctive sound of the Telecaster is due to the fat bridge pickup and internal electronics. That would also account for why my Esquire sounds amazing... even without a second pickup...so much so in fact, I keep thinking my Esquire is a Tele when I play it. Something to remember is that the coil resistance of the main bridge pickup is roughly twice the resistance of that little "lipstick tube" like pickup near the neck. This means the bridge pickup is the big kahuna. Some would even accuse the neck pickup as being ineffective... but a lot of that tele "snap" is due to that pickup near the neck. An internal bleed capacitor... this means that as the volume is turned down, the treble still can be heard... works the magic on that neck pickup, to give your Tele that special Telecaster sound. A good setting to remember for your volume is to have the it at about 3/4 to get the Tele sound we all know and love.

Urban Legends?

This thread is from four years ago... but I had not heard it.
There is a story online about one Buddy Chambers and his wife Clara (a country music act), who were flying from Fullerton California to Reno Nevada in 1951... and you can guess what they were carrying... yes... Two Brand New Blackguard Tele's in their small airplane that went down in bad weather. Apparently, they crashed in a remote area and after all these years logging crews found the airplane upside down. After the remains of Clara and Buddy were verified, two tattered boxes, with two equally tattered tweed cases were found lodged in the back area of the plane... with the new guitars inside intact. The story supposedly originated from PPI news service, which may or may not be based out of Pakistan... hold it... is that something pulling on my leg? (I love this story, and indeed hope the part about the new guitars is true... I am now off to leave my Xmas note for Santa in my chimney).

Scrapper Blackwell

Every so often there will be a 'lesson' in the Blues... by the end of the year, you should have a working repertoire of Blues Musicians. Francis Hillman Blackwell was born in North Carolina and was one of 16 children. He was also part Cherokee. He spent most of his life in Indiana and was a self-taught guitarist. His first guitar was built out of wood, wire and cigar boxes. In his teens he travelled as far as Chicago, as a part time musician. He was known for being hard to work with and withdrawn, but still managed to create a productive working relationship with Leroy Carr, who played piano. His solo recordings included "Kokomo Blues". Blackwell and Carr toured the South between 1928 and 1935 as stars of the blues scene, recording over 100 sides together. Carr apparently also did time for bootlegging. Their last recording together was in 1935, for the Bluebird Label. They split due to financial/ payment disputes. Carr died soon later, from heavy drinking. Blackwell retired, but returned to music in the 1950's. Blackwell died when he was shot and killed in an alley at the age of only 59. The crime remains unsolved.

Cannon's Jug Stompers

When I was talking with that well-known lead guitarist Monday we got to talking about musicians, and their working process... how do musicians get their inspiration? He mentioned an older gent (possibly some older blues player...it was not the lead in
Cannon's Jug Stompers....)...
This older gent would trail the aisles of supermarkets, and take half an hour to do one aisle. His niece or daughter wanted to get to know him better, and was told the best way to do this would be to join him at the supermarket. Nobody else in the family wanted to ever go shopping with this man, because it took too long... he would be reading the cans of obscure items, looking at ingredients. For writers the inspirational behavior (Hi Rob!) might be Googling, or reading the Obituaries... or I know a woman who vacuums in the nude until she feels ready to write. Got Milk™?

Bolin Guitars

I had to show you Bolin Guitars... isn't this great?

Ingredient 'X'

If anyone has ever read Poe, I recall it was his stories that would always have a line like..."Dear Reader... I am now about to recount to you a most amazing story about a Mr "A___". This 'literary device' was used to make the story being told more believable, as if it was necessary to protect someone's identity. Yesterday I met with a very well known lead guitarist, indeed a "Mr A__". It seems musicians do indeed love everything Guitar, including those little Caps, Pots and wires that go into making them sound so great... Mr A__ agreed ... nobody really knows what special 'Ingredient X' makes one guitar sound great, and another sound like a log with strings. We both agreed that those amazingly perfect collector-grade guitars we always see for sale (the ones where you have to remove all your metal items...just like at the airport... before you play them) generally sound like those logs I just mentioned. The reason why many of those 'Collector grade' guitars are indeed so perfect is that some musician bought it, and then put it away in a closet where it belonged. It wasn't 'one of the good ones'. Mr K__ (Mr A__'s tech) recounted the story of an original 1950's Flying V, in perfect condition... that he had been shown, that sounded like it should be put under the bed. There are the Collector guitars worth tons of money, and then there are Player guitars... messed with, tweaked, dropped and scratched... that sound great... and also cost much less. So what do you want?

3-Ways

Coming up... 3-ways.

Also Coming Soon...

(Thank you to the guys at The Music Zoo for these wonderfully clear photos of my guitar insides).

How to Date Your Tele/ Esquire Pot

Next up... how to date your pot(s)... This is a 1958 Telecaster Potentiometer (Pot) from my Esquire, which reads (clockwise) '250K...AUDIO...137...947...3596. After 1952, ALL Fender Pots have '250k' on them... if they don't, they have come from another brand of guitar. Here are a couple examples of how to read the numbers on your Pot: If the code says '304 521'... you ignore the 304 portion (which is the manufacturer's code... 304 was for Stackpole, and 137 was for CTS... 140 would be a Clarisat pot), and use the 521... in this case... the '5' means from 1955, and the '21' means the 21st week of 1955. What if there are a total of 7 numbers... for instance; '304 5913'... once again, ignore the 304 portion, and date using the '5913'... in this case it would mean... the 13th week of 1959. Either of these 'code schemes' are genuine. In the case of my Pot, we read the '947'... which would mean the 47th week of 1959, for the manufacture date. Remember, Leo (at Fender) probably had these delivered pretty quickly to his shop, where they were immediately made available to be assembled into guitars. I hear Leo was 'tight'... so it is possible he would order a week or two supply at one time... and then go through them making guitars (this is just conjecture on my part, after reading a lot about the early Fender manufaturing process).

Insides....

Here is what is inside my 1958 Esquire. There are many things you want to check for in here, before buying. However, a lot
of the talent in knowing where to look will come from study and hands-on experience with vintage Fender guitars. Since this is
'Spotting the Fakes 101' we are going to keep it fairly simple. Esquires used a three cap (short for Capacitor) set-up and one resistor. In 1956 Fender used something called a Cornell Dubilier, but just after that went to flat white caps called 'phonebooks'. Caps were .05 @100V s. Now that you see how complex this can get, all you want to know is who to take it to for an appraisal and a little about what is going on inside yourself (since you are buying the guitar). The little photo here is a .05 @100V Cap (the phone book one looks like a little phone book, no joke). When it comes to the wiring, and the soldering... a professional can tell if the connections are 'original' or have been re-done. If anyone out there has ever assembled (as a kid) one of those 'make it yourself' transistor radios, and had to mess up the soldering, you know that the more you re-do things on a connection, the worse it looks, and the more 'mess' you leave. Suffice it to say things should look rather clean with all connections, and all the parts (for the given Fender year) should be correct. Since this Esquire once had been converted to a Tele by someone, and then put back to original again with a period correct Fender wiring harness, the connections you see should be mostly original, apart from a couple that it would have been necessary to resolder to get the harness back into the guitar and attached to the pickup and jack attachments.