Wez is building me a 25.5" scale P-90 guitar, but I'll let him give the details when he is ready!
hey i'm always willing to talk about guitars
phils is a through neck SG with two P90's. The neck is a 3 piece, 2 large chunks of mahogany with a centre strip of wenge. The body wings are korina. Nice ziracote fretboard with birdseye maple binding and no inlays
as he says it is a 25.5" scale with 24 frets. tall and wide for 1-12 and tall narrow for the rest to stop it getting cramped up the top end. I have the bridge (schaller wrap-around) in the same position as on a gibson SG so it still looks right and allows full access to all 24 frets. that gives the guitar quite a long neck but the through neck construction and dual Carbon fibre neck reinforcemnt with two way trusas rod should ensure neck stability. The neck join is carved in a similar way to a John birch to take away the heel which isnt needed on a through neck anyway. The headstock is also shorter than a gibson so the whole guitar is about the same length
I moan about SG's quite often but i think i have taken care of a lot of the issues i have with them. Obviously the neck stability has been dealt with and i have also moved the top strap button to the back of the upper horn which should help with the balance which could have potentially been worse than a gibson because of the longer neck. As it is it seems like the blance will be spot on and it wont tilt forward the way Gibson SG's do
Its going to be finished black and the hardware is nickel - including two special P-90's with casino style covers made by Tim (currently my profile pic)
just about ready for finishing now!!
so why go on about this in a thread about tele's?
i think it shows how you can take something quite standard, that will still look relatively standard at the end... but completely customise the spec to what you want, and more specifically to something that isnt easy to find on the open market.
So obviously i would say go custom, not necissarily me as there are loads of good builders in the Uk at the moment and Jonathans name has already been mentioned - you couldnt go wrong there!!
Warmoth is also a good idea because of teh number of options they offer on relatively standard stuff like this
PS... if you do go for one of the fenders change the pickups quickly.. I had some fender black doves and whilst they didnt sound awfull they were not inspiring and the construction was the worse i had seen. Warped bobbins, very untidy windings and the wires from the coil have to travel through 5mm of open air to get to where the lead wires attach.. i am suprised i got them in a guitar without snapping them!!
