Teisco Tulip (pens) DONE!

robert(original) · Post by **robert(original)** » Mon Apr 01, 2013 1:24 pm

i finished this up on easter and man, its a fucking cool guitar! great lil jammer. after i set it all up and got in playing just right i was suprised! i really like this little thing!
the fret ends are blind, which is fantastic, and has a GREAT feel to it, tho i noticed there are no side dots..... something im probly going to add when i can.
I had to have the bridge holes drilled for me, and there are slightly off, but its good enough to me.
I had to get some all thread and specialty bolts. cuz the trem plate is o.g. but the rest was long since gone, so i just kinda rigged up a lil hard tail jobby and it works great.
there is a slight short in the jack, in reality its just dirty. i got in there and cleaned i the best i could with some fine grit paper and a rag. in reality i need to probly retouch everything to make it gig worthy, but for what im doing its fine, and only shorts out of i push on the cord against the jack in an unatural fashion.
anywho... PICS

the bridge pup sits so FUCKING HIGH! that i had to use the neck plate as a shim for the neck! it just barely clears the bridge pup and in reality it still needs to go down about -3 more millimeters. but, we all know that they arent ajustable.... sooo

originally the bit of wood was still there(the spot that has no wood)
and i was going to clean it out and relue it down the best i could, but when i pulled it off, i promptly lost it... no fucking idea where it went... so i just kinda smoothed it out a bit, i was going to put a strat like contour on it, but decided that was alot of work for nothing, and it looks cooler with the "kurdtz" style damage.
either way. its badass.

I gotta thank pens a million times over for sending this my way, it kept me busy for a lil bit and now i have a guitar to play, and all i did was pay like 10 bucks for shipping or something like that. THANKS MAN!
and also, the person that stepped out of line and let me have the geeter. thanks to you as well. i also have a lil tiny mini "belt buckle" amp that i got for 10 bucks the other day with built in over drive, so im officially on my way back to rocking faces and melting panties!

speedfish · Post by **speedfish** » Mon Apr 01, 2013 1:34 pm

Brandon W · Post by **Brandon W** » Mon Apr 01, 2013 1:52 pm

I like it.

Pens · Post by **Pens** » Mon Apr 01, 2013 3:00 pm

Fuck yeah dude. I didn't know the pickups weren't adjustable, how the hell did they work back in the day??? Just have action a mile high from the fretboard?!

Brandon W · Post by **Brandon W** » Mon Apr 01, 2013 4:09 pm

Pens wrote:Fuck yeah dude. I didn't know the pickups weren't adjustable, how the hell did they work back in the day??? Just have action a mile high from the fretboard?!

When i saw it i thought best slide guitar ever! Very cool. I dig it a lot.

robert(original) · Post by **robert(original)** » Mon Apr 01, 2013 5:21 pm

i forgot to mention that i added two screws on either side of the bridge pup cuz the guard had lifted slightly, making the pup stick up that much farther(2mms top end)
yea, i guess that it just came with really fucking high action. i remember my ex girlfriends silvertone bobcat, or hornet, i cant remember what it was, the pups didn't ajust either, and they were thr famed gold foil mustache pickups.
I could actually cut into the pickguard and get the pickup to move down another couple of mms, but i don't have access to, nor do i have a router atm. in reality, it plays just fine the way it is. one day, i will probably cut the guard and make the pup ajustable, but for the time being its fine. i picked it up at lunch time, a good 12 hours after i had set it up, and it was still in perfect tune. the tuners are HARD as fuck to turn, but they keep the fucker in tune, so thats really what matters.
I wish i had the capabilities of doing a demo of my lil tiny belt buckle amp and the guitar, i think a few of you cats would get it a kick out of it, just for the lulz really. and actually my bunkie has a really nice camera phone thing and might be able to do that for me.

Pens · Post by **Pens** » Mon Apr 01, 2013 5:37 pm

Oh, btw dude you really ought to oil or grease those tuners sooner than later. They are similar to the ones on my Decca Tulip and I had one of the plastic knobs shatter on that guitar because with the strings on the tuners were too hard to turn and it just destroyed the knob. Not saying that's gonna happen but I'd suggest oiling them up just in case.

robert(original) · Post by **robert(original)** » Mon Apr 01, 2013 5:48 pm

indeed i probably should, tho i don't have the cash to buy wd-40 atm, and the maintenance fellow that i got to drill the bridge post holes is hard as hell to find sometimes, i literally just left the body outside his door with a note, had the spot marked ,and the size of the bit he would need, still took his 2 days to do, and i need him to bore out the tuner holes on a ukulele i just got. so i imagine that will take another 3 days to get done, and then asking to borrow a spritz of oil may only take 6 hours.

Noirie. · Post by **Noirie.** » Mon Apr 01, 2013 6:17 pm

That looks ace Rob. My best mate's dad has an old satellite guitar which is kinda similar to this. Would love to see it fixed up one day just to play it properly.

robert(original) · Post by **robert(original)** » Mon Apr 01, 2013 6:25 pm

these guitars are worth fucking with (IMO) alot more so than the new shitty wal-mart first act or random strat copy guitars, the finish and fretting is far superior on this lil guitar than anything newer. and the pickups have this fantastic trashy sound, especially the bridge! the neck is warm enough, and the tone control has a really big dip at the end, but it does the job properly, also, i fucking love on/off switches, they look way cool and offer some cool options if the idea to mod ever comes into play.

dub · Post by **dub** » Wed Apr 03, 2013 7:18 am

Not two hours ago a hippy chick walked through my workplace carrying an old Tiesco bass that had been stripped back to the wood then painted over with red and green housepaint.

There seems to be alot of these kind of guitars floating around NZ, people always seem to want more than they're worth, or they buy em just for those Ry Cooder pickups. Was it Mages who had a hollowbody he'd painted an awesome dark matt grey colour?

robert(original) · Post by **robert(original)** » Wed Apr 03, 2013 12:19 pm

you can still find these things for 5-10 bucks in random pawn shops/thrift shops, and like this one, they can still be had ala dumpster diving. The only thing i don't really like about it is the truss rod doesn't work 100% the neck is slightly warped permanently, and the truss rod only half corrects the problem. the frets are LOW! but im cool with that, i actually prefer insanely low/small frets to medium jumbo frets.
in a few weeks when i change strings it will need to be tweaked again, and i still need to oil the gearheads, but for the moment its a kick ass fucking guitar.

dub · Post by **dub** » Thu Apr 04, 2013 4:58 am

Really loved this mod I saw over on ilovefuzz.com:

Josh · Post by **Josh** » Tue Apr 16, 2013 2:44 pm

I have four of these pickups from a tiesco sg I have lying around in pieces, only issue is I have no idea what to do with them. kindve want to put them in my jaguar and jazzmaster.