Long story on this, but a friend-of-a-friend recommended me for some work on his guitars. He's a Tex/Mex player, and liked my Tele's when he stopped by my place. We got to talking about building him a custom, he loved the idea of taking a Tele and mashing it up with some other models. So, we sat down, drew out a list of things he'd like and before I knew it, he was handing over some earnest cash to get this started. I decided to build twins - a sacrificial prototype (mine) and the final, polished product. But, both nearly identical spare some things I would prefer on mine, verses his preferences.
Took me 3 months, but here is the prototype (warts and all, I have a couple small issues to iron out on the final version, but they're minor).
So, here's the skinny on this one-of-a-kind hybrid. Tele body made of basswood (think light), with a blue pearloid laminate top. Cream binding, slab style body. Neck is maple with an ebony fretboard, 24.75" LP scale length, 12" radius, med-jumbo stainless frets and a 70's strat headstock. String thru-hard tail, Filterbilly Classic pickups, and a 6-way toggle with coil taps. Grover tuners, bone nut, skunk stripe neck/truss and a satin nitro finish with hammered silver on the headstock.
It's very unique, but I really dig the final product. Feels very much like a Guild or some LP models to play...that scale makes bends easy, the neck is fast. Feels nothing like a tele, except for the picking hand. It's crazy light, but it doesn't sacrifice much in tone...has a lot of range, snappy and bright on the bridge PU when tapped, but has good bass and midrange when running both coils and sustain is good. I don't think I've ever seen a model quite like it, but the end result is pretty fun to play.
The Filterbilly's are really awesome. Really easy to dial in grit just hitting the strings hard, and they sound amazing clean and with a good tube sound...true to the lo-output filtertrons they're based on. Very affordable too, and drop in to a HB hole easily.
I'll post up once the next model is done....should be a clone except for a slightly different bridge and headstock color.