ShortScale.org

here's some strummer pics i found:

actual guitar (looks like it has two strat style trees?):
reissues:

yeah, what year is that where they had the six saddle bridge and the double string trees? late 60s sometime?

the signature model is just a fender classic series 60s tele with a relic job. there are other things about this guitar that don't quite follow with the pictures I've seen of the strummer models. it doesn't have that round tooling hole under the pickguard like most mexican teles. also the grain was very nice looking. this was a body that was definitely selected for sunburst. this would make sense if they had intended on keeping it sunburst but if you were just going to fuck it up with a heavy relic job why would you care about selecting a nice piece of wood? seems kind of odd.

I don't doubt the guitar's authenticity, everything seems to check out as a strummer model. there are just some interesting inconsistencies about this particular guitar that make me think they were trying to get rid of screw ups.

well, a lot of the guitar had just wood showing. And the original Strummer was a burst, was it not? Then Strummer painted over it with black rattle cans.

right I know, and that's how they did it on this guitar too. but what I'm saying is, they didn't just apply a sloppy burst to some random crap guitar body and then proceed to fuck it up with spray paint and belt sanding (like you would think they would, right?). with this guitar at least, they actually started with a fairly nice looking body before they went on to do nasty things to it. maybe that's just how they did it with these guitars. ...or maybe this was at first a body intended to be a sunburst, someone fucked up the burst and they set it aside for another day. then they came out with the strummer model and used up all these old 2nds lying around the shop. of course this is complete wild conjecture with little factual basis.

right. and it's impossible to say. I mean how much of the sunburst finish was left and could you see any of it?

Seriously that's one of the best looking Teles I've seen - love the way the pickguard and HB ring are matched and then the cream HB and Robroe too....the colour! Amazing work.

thanks, colors are one of the things that kind of come natural to me. if only it were that way with playing guitar!

latest update: the bluesbucker... yeah... not liking it. it's actually kind of high output (like 10k), sounds decent if not a little generic with distortion, sucks for cleans though. if you lower the pickup to try to get it lower output it just moves the magnetic field out of it's optimal spot making it sound really thin and shitty. I've been having trouble getting that neck pickup to sound very good either. I think it's kind of a little too low output.

if anyone has any ideas for humbuckers with nice clean tones I'd love to hear about them!

Mages wrote:thanks, colors are one of the things that kind of come natural to me. if only it were that way with playing guitar!

latest update: the bluesbucker... yeah... not liking it. it's actually kind of high output (like 10k), sounds decent if not a little generic with distortion, sucks for cleans though. if you lower the pickup to try to get it lower output it just moves the magnetic field out of it's optimal spot making it sound really thin and shitty. I've been having trouble getting that neck pickup to sound very good either. I think it's kind of a little too low output.

if anyone has any ideas for humbuckers with nice clean tones I'd love to hear about them!

Well I don't really use a bridge humbucker for clean tones but when I do its normally my JJ with a Dimarzio PAF Pro in the bridge which is surprisingly nice.

actually, yeah I was thinking of a PAF pro! I have one in another guitar and like it a lot. it's black though so it would kind of ruin my much praised color scheme.

According to DiMarzio they offer the PAF Pro in a load of colours? I haven't seen many around though. I'd look on eBay first.

yeah, I think I can get a cream one, it's just that I have that black one.

Easy - put in black one, get disenchanted with guitar, sell to Dave for ultra bro deal?? huh huh?!?!

Mages wrote:so I was thinking something like theeessss......





but I decided fuck that noise, I'm going with something more this styley



except I'm doing an open cream bucker in the bridge and a cream duo sonic pickup in the neck.

I know you guys are all doubting me/cursing me now, but trust me it will look ill. you'll see.

third pic is taasttteeeyyy

not sure anyone will care but I figured out what was wrong with the pickups. it wasn't the pickups at all, it was the bridge. you would strum the guitar and could hear that no bass was being produced acoustically. so without realizing it I was basically compensating for this by raising the pickup all the way up. this way it would get some bass response but sound kind of shitty and too gainy. the problem was I'm missing one of the screws for the bridge, so it's not being held to the body snug enough. I just changed the location of one of the screws though and bam, huge difference. I also put on some brass saddles and whoa, they sound much better than the shitty threaded steel saddles. no contest. more bass while still retaining a little top end bite, not all plinky midrange like with the steel saddles. in fact I would definitely recommend this for other fender guitars now, like on musicmasters and duo-sonics.

the switch on there is a strangle switch like on a jag. it pretty much didn't do anything before (should of been a hint something was up but I just thought I fucked up the wiring somehow). but it was because there was no bass to cut. now that I got the guitar making bass I can go from hugely chunky fat riffs to searing snappy lines with the flip of a switch. sounds incredible with the russian big muff.

Mages wrote:

I just thought it deserved another look. That's one fine looking tele. Glad you got the setup issues worked.

cooterfinger wrote:That's one fine looking tele. Glad you got the setup issues worked.

+2

the story continues.........

never did get on with the strat pickup neck pickup. so I've been trying out a bunch of different pickups. if anyone knows a good P90-like (aka fat sounding but like medium to vintage output levels) strat pickup I'm all ears.

unfortunately, a little while ago I had to sell the neck because I needed the money. I sold it to a guy in italy who was a complete pain in my ass, but I got $300 for it. so I finally have a little money again and bought a classic vibe neck to replace it. this guy on ebay sold me the neck, both pickups, and pickguard from a classic vibe for $115.





it's OK. the other neck (basically a MIM '60s classic) was better. definitely liked the 7.25" radius better than the 9.5". and I preferred the C shape on the MIM Classic neck to the "Modern C" shape on the classic vibe. the '60s classic neck was a comfortable C shape that fit in your hand just right. The classic vibe is more of a modern thin neck. not really thin, but still, it's thin.

Also I got a gibson burstbucker pro for the bridge pickup. it's your standard issue gibson PAF basically but works much better in this guitar than the blues bucker that was in there before. I think the bluesbucker would make a better neck pickup.