“It was done to overcome non-symmetry” - fancy way to say the later owner wanted a cutaway on the side of the guitar facing down. Okay. There are other variables involved in flipping a guitar that can also lead to butchery.
What is it with '63 Fenders? My old bandmate got a '63 Strat that someone in NZ butchered. The original owner was a fan of Brian Jones, so cut off both cutaway horns so the guitar looked more like a Vox Teardrop guitar. Oh, the humanity. I helped find a replacement body.
don’t ask - cool; I read Deke’s first volume. I hadn’t realized he had a second; I will check it out. By the way, you know how Deke is a maniac fan of Paul Bigsby’s guitars? There is one up for auction - expected to go for over $200K. I would link to the thread on the UMGF Vintage Corner forum thread on it, but the messageboard provider that they use, Yuku, is down again. It really stinks.
ETA: one last note: I can’t remember if I read it in Al Kooper’s autobiography or just a guitar magazine write-up of Bloomfield, but apparently, when he showed up to play guitar on Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone, he didn’t have the Tele in a case. He walked in with the guitar, wiped off the snow or rain that had gotten on it and plugged it in. Oy.
I’ll bet the nut and the bridge are not. If you flip it over, the pick guard is on top, the thumb rest, if present, is on the bottom, the side-mounted input jack is under your arm and your arm is brushing against the controls as you play. Might be symmetrical to a looker, but not to a player.
Thanks **Wordman, **now I have another website where I can stare at guitars I want… but can’t afford!
Unfortunately, the cutaway is the least of the “butchery” done to that guitar. If you watch the Dan Erlewine video that groovie linked, you’ll see a couple more cringe-worthy repairs that have been done to it.
The pots and pick-ups were upgraded in '66 and '68 respectively, and wiring was replaced which are all good things actually, but both the pick-ups and bridge were poorly maintained and full of dust and corrosion.
The nut and fret replacements look like they were done by a real butcher and there’s massive screw holes all over the horn from the left-handed John Nuese hunting for a comfortable strap position. The cutaway mod may have solved his fingerboard problem but there is no getting away from the bridge and controls configuration. That toggle switch was probably a pain in the ass while playing which is most likely why its cap is missing.
BTW John Nuese was the guitarist for Gram Parson’s first band The International Submarine band before he joined The Byrds, and was a significant influence of the country rock movement of the 60s and 70s.
I love guitars with a patina of scratches, dents, wear marks from playing, it’s part of their history and I suppose I could forgive the cutaway but the other “repairs” are an atrocity.
So the question is why? There were left-handed models available, albeit fewer, but not impossible to find in California at the time.
So… either it had sentimental value or he realized it’s significance since he kept it in his possession until his death in 2012.
Who knows why he tortured that guitar while also holding onto it? Perhaps that narrow B profile Tele neck appealed to him. B profiles, to my knowledge, are not that common. Also, I am a rightie, but believe lefties are faced with sufficiently-limited choices that they view flipping a righty guitar as simply one option which requires mods. Guitarists are always modding their guitars, so this is just another flavor.
Yeah, the swapping out of the pickups and just as importantly to me, the pots and caps, was also too bad. I have 250k pots in my Tele builds - I never need to go that brittle-bright where I value what a 1mg can do.
“Tortured” is definitely the right word. I’m not sure if I would call any of the work, besides the cutaway, a mod though… more like amateur repairs with limited success.
I’m actually a lefty/ambi that converted to righty over 30 years ago for several reasons, one definitely being limited access to “playable” guitars.
It’s interesting that he chose to cut out a sharp horn (more of a Gibson look) rather than mimic the original Fender round “top” horn.
I never knew symmetry could be such a hinky word. You can modify symmetrical instruments without a lot of carpentry. A telecaster is not playable upside down because of its non symmetry. The guy altered the guitar so he could reach the notes way up high which would be otherwise unplayable when you flip the thing. He also needed a setup to compensate for flipping the string orientation. You never saw Hendrix playing an upside down Tele did you? (He might’ve been able to)
BTW nuts and bridges and pickups are meant to be replaceable and not part of the wood body. Is there something I’m missing?
Nuts, Bridges and pickups, pickguards as well as strap and end pieces are meant to replaceable. The kind of “butchery” involved in these things is done all the time to instruments, collectible and not. If it’s collectible you can learn to live without it. It’s normal. This Tele is not at all. Hence the OP.
Yea, not really a fan of that either… but not quite as jarring on the eyes though.
He could have picked a lot of other shapes that may have been less work and had more synergy with the guitar’s original look. It looks more like an accident than a deliberate mod.
It reminds me of the time one of my old band-mates that dropped his strat and half of the horn broke off along the grain of the wood forming a flat side up to the point. It was on the bottom so he just didn’t bother fixing it.
It is sad though. Cutting away some of the beef of the guitar body and replacing the pots, pick-ups, etc. would have changed the tone of the guitar somewhat.
Also, the frets and nut were replaced with the latter being set significantly higher and with a different string spacing which would have changed it’s playability a lot.
Sure it may have been the sound and action he wanted, in the end, it’s not really a '63 Tele anymore but it does have its place in history.
Well, keep in mind that, at the time he performed the mods (1974-75, maybe), it wasn’t a “vintage” instrument. Here he is playing the bass in 1974, pre-modifications:
Given that the performance is with the band's original drummer, and appears to be in front of a high school audience, I'm guessing that this is shortly before they landed their record contract. (They self-released their first album, which was subsequently re-released after they got their contract.) I remember reading that the first thing Geddy Lee did with his share of the advance money was go out and buy a Rickenbacker 4001. So, maybe, once he had the Rick in his hands, he just considered the P-Bass to be his "old piece of junk" and decided to have some fun with it. At the time, there was nothing "vintage" or "legendary" or "historic" about it. Geddy is best-known for his 4001 and his '72 Jazz.
Even Carol Kaye considered her P-Basses to be simple tools. She claims that she was so busy working that, when her strings needed replacing she’d just take her current bass to the nearest music store and trade it in for a new one.
Yeah, we’re digressing, but it is interesting: I like a good double-cutaway, too, but ugly is ugly. That is one thing Fender typically gets right: the design of the guitar. Their offset-waist shape (e.g., Jazzmasters and Jaguars) are just perfectly balanced. And of course the Strat is MOMA-level design perfection.
But look at a Mosrite: to my knowledge, some of their shapes came from Semi Mosley flipping a Fender and shaping the reverse. It just looks off to me. Or Ibanez Fireman series, which is Paul Gilbert’s signature model reverse Iceman. Always hits me funny.
SGs, 335’s, Strats, etc. - perfect double-cuts. A double-cutaway Les Paul (they exist - along with Les Pauls with NO cutaway - my eyes, they burn!) or a double-cut Tele? No thank you.
Looks like the double cutaway is a new addition to the catalog, since searching for a used one shows nothing older than 2015 that I can find. I bet it eventually outsells the traditional Tele.
Personally, I like it a lot - reminds me of a 335 - but they shouldn’t have waited until I’d already learned to love the hunchback horn.
On the other hand, any time they want to fix the the barefoot peghead would be just fine with me.
I can’t recall when I first heard about it, but I could swear it was more than a year ago.
As for outselling the traditional Tele, well you invoked the very word which suggests that it will never happen. Tradition. Tele’s can morph into infinite variations, but the original design is something that will never go away. I remember when they started selling the '52 Reissue and it blew up to become their best-selling model.
I believe more Tele’s are still sold with 3-barrel bridges vs. the more adjustable 6-saddle ones. Tradition.
As a kid in the '70’s, I hated the Tele shape - not when there were Les Pauls, Explorers, V’s, Icemen, Mockingbirds, etc. After I learnd to actually operate a Tele and respect the truth about how a Tele can do anything, I came to find it my favorite shape (well, after a 1924 Gibson L-5, but I am not worthy of archtops)…
Yeah, it’s obviously a matter of taste. If I had an actual Les Paul, I’d start looking to trade it away for a double cut special that day, and I’d rather have a Mosrite than a strat.
But, guitarists are generally scared of new things. The 3 saddle tele bridge is a prime example. It doesn’t offer any advantage over the 6 saddle one, but people buy them for their “mojo” anyway.