Let's see your GUITAR!

[Paul_C]

Is the purple one modified Squier Sonic Esquire?

Yes, it's got a Billy Corgan sig. Railhammer in it.

[dubkitty]

i was plonking around on Reddit and discovered that at some point Fender actually did sell Telecasters with a factory b-bender called the Fender Bender. a tiny bit of my faith in humanity is restored.

[Paul_C]

I've taken a group photo of my recent acquisitions, followed by the old pic of the rest.

I'm done for now . . .

[Monarch]

Is the purple one modified Squier Sonic Esquire?

Yes, it's got a Billy Corgan sig. Railhammer in it.

Cool. Recently I've started gasing for that one because it is purple and it is cheap. Plan to buy it soon and to use it as a mod platform (ofc); planned upgrades are some Dimarzio pickup and black hardware. But then I've noticed Squier Affinity Telecaster HH with already all black hardware and then I would upgrade only pickup. But damn it is not purple. Anyway, since you have all Telecasters in the world, which one of these two have a thiner neck and better overall build quality?

[Paul_C]

I've got four Squiers and none are at all bad.

The Sonic has a thinner body than the others but it's none the worse for that. I'm not sure any of them have particularly chunky necks, certainly not as big as the Mexican J Mascis sig.

[dubkitty]

i went to Richmond last night to check out amps and brought back new string sets. there were a couple of guitars that had really bad, corroded strings and also needed to be cleaned up because they were last played in summer environments and were all sweaty and shit. both are red, and i already had the Special Jet out so i thought it was an opportunity to get a group shot of the red guitars. the funny thing is that except for Heritage Cherry i don't really like red guitars, but i keep ending up with them. in a perfect world i'd have been able to get the Lead II with the pau ferro board in black for the Mission of Burma effect, but those only came with a maple board and i'm not vain enough to replace the body just for the sake of the color. Candy Apple Red is one of my least favorite Fender colors, but that was the used JM i could get with the overage when i traded my Rickenbacker 360 for a Guild Aristocrat at Atomic Music up in Maryland.

from left:

2018 Squier Classic Vibe Jazzmaster: replaced the tremolo with a Fender American Professional trem which is tits. swapped the rhythm circuit cap for a Jaguar-value cap which makes the rhythm circuit useful for something other than fuzzy bass. this came with a Fender guard that didn't fit and black pickup covers; apparently the original owner tried to make it look like the cover of Loveless. i replaced the guard with a Squier guard and swapped out the plastic parts for vintage-period-correct shades of white. i love the retro knobs i found on Reverb.

2019 Fender Lead II: this is exactly as it came out of the box.

2004 Gretsch 5259 Special Jet: this uncommon budget-line Gretsch is essentially a singlecut Les Paul Special with DeArmond 2000 pickups, which are close enough to the sound of Dynasonics to fool a drunk guy. wonderful spanky guitar, all mahogany. 1 volume, 1 tone, no waiting. i like this better than my Tokai LPS, and i like the LPS an awful lot. i looked for one of these for over a decade before i found this one in 2019.

2005 Epiphone 1961 SG with Vibrola: i changed the tone caps for silver mica ones which apparently pass more highs and made it rather more sparkly. the super secret mod i don't tell Reddit about but i'll tell y'all is domed thumbwheel adjusters for the bridge. you can get these as loose parts on Reverb or eBay if you watch. they allow the bridge to rock with the tremolo rather like a Gretsch "rocking bar bridge," and make the modern Vibrola useable. i actually like the Vibrola a lot because it has the least amount of play in the mechanism of any tremolo i've ever seen...it's great for the kind of quivers that Tom Verlaine ripped off of John Cipollina.

1968 Gibson ES-335TD: this is the guitar whose neck got broken in 1991 and didn't get fixed until pandemic days because a vintage luthier guy i knew from the Gretsch Pages offered to fix it for essentially nothing as a kindness. dead stock other than the Bigsby B7--which once again works way better with the domed thumbwheels--and a Nashville-style bridge that replaced the original ABR-1 with nylon saddles. hottest pickups i have in the house. i could probably get along with just this and a Fender, but it's really heavy even when seated. undoubtedly the best guitar i own, or probably ever will.

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[dubkitty]

apparently i need a red Strat so i'll have a red guitar with every tremolo i'm interested in.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Wow quite a red collection Some real cool ones there.

The colour I don't actually like very much but seem to keep getting because I find cool guitars in it and I'm not that vain is sunburst. I relate to the feeling

[dubkitty]

today i got the Kondor working again. to refresh, the Kondor is a eBay special project guitar i put together back in 2013 using a Kent body, its proper pickguard purchased separately, two of the proper rectangular pickups also purchased separately, and a Hondo II neck. the bridge pickup is a Guyatone, the tremolo is a modern import, the bridge is a Bigsby aluminum bridge the base of which i sanded down from arched to flat, and i used a set of locking Fender tuners i think i had around with ebony buttons that came off my Eastman acoustic when i switched those out for tortoiseshell. i wired it with a rotary switch that gives me all the possible pickup combinations, and filled the extra holes in the pickguard with aluminum caps that are used to cover the neck bolt holes on old National/Supro electrics. the pickups are absolutely gorgeous...i wound up using it on several loops because it's so pretty. it's surprisingly playable now that it's set up, though the neck is uber-chonky.

i fucked up the nut the last time i tried to fix it and it's been sitting for at least 2 years. i ordered a replacement nut from Sweetwater but hadn't gotten around to it for a month and a half; it was one of the myriad items on my guitar to-do list and i decided this was as good a day as any. used a Tusq nut meant for Gibson electrics, which had good string spacing but needed to be narrowed a bit. the tremolo desperately needed adjusting but now is pretty solid for an imitation 60s Japanese trem. i love the wacky knob. i had to cut a piece of outer jacket from a discarded patch cable and slip it over the edge of the bridge pickup cut in the pickguard because the Guyatone pickup, though larger than a typical single-coil, is too small for the aperture and wouldn't align with the strings otherwise.

it's like getting a whole new guitar.

all the guitars on this are the Kondor.

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[coldbrightsunlight]

Man that thing is ugly love a project though.

[dubkitty]

it skipped steampunk and went straight to crust punk.

it really does play well now. i somehow managed to find the sweet spot with the truss rod despite having a hard time either figuring it out or moving that wheel adjuster in either direction, and the caveman fret leveling job from a decade ago (flat sanding block till the flatted fret surfaces were the same width, crowned using reducing weights of sandpaper) works quite well. i'd never do it to a proper guitar, but this was a what-the-fuck project that didn't really matter. i think i'd have to hang off a cliff from it to truly warp that neck, though...it's 18 mm deep without the thick slab of a fingerboard, 24 mm with the board. i could probably kill someone with it if i took a big swing. it's all solid mahogany so its resonances are quite interesting between the wood, the neck, the aluminum bridge, and the large routed space below the chromed-steel pickguard where sound rattles around. the pickups are microphonic enough to be affected sonically by the pickguard, and i can hear it through the amp when i tap the guard next to a live pickup with my pick. i'll bet it'd be a hoot and a holler to play through a 100W amp which would make it do all kinds of interesting things.

[Zork]

My Casino came in. It's amazing how resonant and lively that guitar is. It rings like a bell and we're having an awesome time together. I love that neck! Of course I had to order a Bigsby tho...

[dubkitty]

obviously!

[backwardsvoyager]

finally came full circle

1980 "the strat" neck with a head refin, inca silver 90s am std body, fender CS pickups, etc.
(a friend put it together originally)

[dubkitty]

pretty sharp. reminds me of Bob Mould's guitar other than that his is more gold-tinged.