Grateful Dead Music Forum

Figured some of you might get a kick out of this. I am a big Phish fan, and also love the late great Michael Houser from Widespread. I've always played Teles, and a few years ago got the idea to have a fully custom hollow Tele built. This is the result.



It has two Seymour Duncan SD1s in it, with Triple Shot Rails so that I can coil drop either coil on each pickup and go to single coil, and can also choose either series or parallel when in humbucking mode. The small switch next to the pickup selector is a phase switch, so I can throw the PUPs out of phase when they are both on. The bottom right volume knob is a push knob that activates an LR Baggs pickup built into the bridge. There is a stereo output jack, and I have a splitter cable at the end that sends the acoustic to a DI and the electric to my pedal board.

OK, here are a few more pics.Click the image if you want to see it bigger. The guitar weighs six pounds, very nice for those long practice sessions. I also had the case modified slightly to fit it.

Switches:

switches


Side view:

side_view

More pics:

Headstock:

headstock

Full view:

Couple more:

Inlay:




Body:

Cool!

That came out beautifully. Very cool guitar.

On the subject of Languedoc-inspired, here's my Bruton Universal Uppercut. This guitar sounds and plays so great even unplugged that it's become the one I leave out 24/7 to be always within reach when inspiration moves me brightly. (Since the shots below, I replaced the stock Antiquities with Fralin Unbuckers and rewired them to be close though not exactly to Trey's wiring.)

That is one beautiful guitar! I've been on the lookout for a good deal on a Tele thinline with buckers for sometime now. I know they make a reissue but I'm not a fan of the quality. Is yours Semi-hollow or hollow?

calcam wrote:That is one beautiful guitar! I've been on the lookout for a good deal on a Tele thinline with buckers for sometime now. I know they make a reissue but I'm not a fan of the quality. Is yours Semi-hollow or hollow?

It's fully hollow, parallel braced, and archtop with carved top, back and sides.

I like them both!

As an FYI, the guitar was built by Greg German, a luthier in Broomfield, Colorado. Here is his website: http://www.germanguitars.com/ . Greg is an amazing builder. He was really great to work with. I brought the initial concept to him and we went back and forth on a few things. I let him style the headstock the way he felt best, and he came up with the tailpiece design. I chose the woods, and told him exactly what I wanted at the 12th fret. Greg was very communicative throughout the process, and would then send me pics as the guitar progressed. When I went to his house to pick it up, I felt that I'd found my one true guitar.

Anyway, Greg builds both archtops and flattops, and occasionally does solid bodies. I highly recommend him for custom stuff!