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Here's a trio of Telecaster style guitars I built. I was curious to see first hand how much difference wood combinations would make to the amplified tone. My conclusion, there's a difference but who cares. I don't know that I'd ever set out looking for an electric guitar made out of wood X, but rather would take each one as it comes, its own unique, holistic system.

The dark one with the burst over the guard area is Ash. This one was a fun experiment in navigating curve balls. As I was tidying up the body, the router grabbed the body and threw it across the garage. Miraculously there was only really damage around where the pickguard would normally be. So I routed a bunch of that wood out and replaced it with a piece of maple. And thought I might as well roll with the obvious, and decided to try my hand at a burst (albeit an unconventional one).

The white one is torrified Alder, and probably my favorite of the three.

The third is walnut.

Great Teles. I like the dye job on the neck. Are you using a satin clear-coat?

So many questions....
(1) Is that purfling on the side of the neck, or did you build it up with layers of veneer? It looks sharp.

(2) I like your pickguard shape. Can I steal it?

(3) Nice recovery on the maple inlay - what stains did you use?

(4) Did you use the same pickups on all 3 Teles?

(5) What did you use for inlays on the maple neck?

(6) What's with the triangle on the peghead at the first tuning machine?

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Thanks Barry! It was water based dye, (color FX.) The finish is Osmo oil. I sand it all to 600, then 6 coats of oil applied in various ways.

3 layers of veneer, walnut/maple/walnut. I either thinned the neck blank, or the fret board (can't remember which) a little more than what I wanted, plus the fret board was a similar species as the neck but very obviously different, I needed something to differentiate between the two. Seemed like an elegant solution to kill two birds with one stone.



Absolutely! Want me to send you a tracing?



The black Ash body was a waterbased stain sanded back a bit (Saman.) The burst was three colors of waterbased dye (color FX). Black, Red, and the transition was red and black mixed together. I just rubbed till it looked cool. The maple inlay wasn't a perfect fit, I was able to fill some of the gaps with ebony pore filler. But around the horn it was a little ugly, so I just cut a channel and inlaid a strip of ebony, it works in a cool way to definitively end the red.



Yeah, Lindy Fralin Stock Tele pickups. The hardware is all identical too. On the burst I wiped all the nickel down with liquid gun blue. So other than the woods I used, and the inconsistencies in my neck carving they are as identical as I could make them.



Finishing nails



My logo is a triangle, with a stylized S for Searl Guitars. I thought about using my logo, but these guitars are as telecaster as I could make them. There's little that's original to me in the design. So I didn't really want to put my name on them. But a headstock with nothing on it looks unfinished. So the triangles a nod to me, takes the place of what we're used to seeing when we look at that headstock, and is kind of cool. It's also tied to the rest of the guitar in a way. Walnut on the maple neck guitar to match the walnut body. Rosewood on the white one, to match the rosewood fretboard. And walnut again on the burst to match the walnut fretboard.

Home runs on all three!

Very cool Teles Connor!! Maybe some Frailins might get you the tone you want?

All three of those are great looking Teles and I agree with Chris about your pickguard shape. Very nice.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Lots of really nice details on these. The black/red fade "pick guard" is really cool