The Electra Forums

This is the lowly Telecaster I bought in December that I was gonna give away, but after playing it I really fell for the comfy neck and bluesy neck pickup. Only original parts on it were the neck, body, bridge plate, control plate, neck plate and pickguard.

Turns out the neck pickup is a Gibson Humbucker I found from searching on the patent number on the bottom, which is amusing to find out that it is actually a patent by Les Paul for a combined bridge and tailpiece (go figure!). It is so powerful that the bridge pickup (the one that was in there) just couldn't compete, was fairly unremarkable and squealed badly anyway.

Other issues included the incorrectly spaced bridge saddles, laughable string tree's, poor neck relief and a flakey selector switch. So would I sink some money into this or just leave it alone? I happened upon a Stacked Seymore Duncan Telecaster Bridge pickup on Craigs List for $45 (usually sell for around $75) and that was all the encouragement I needed! Also found some decent string trees and brass barrel-type compensated saddles for about $30.

I took the neck off and installed a shim in the pocket, and loosened up the truss rod (which was free despite the amateur paint job), and the action was greatly improved. Installed the new pickup and saddles one night after work and the intonation is much better now. Even all the way up the 'new and powerful' bridge pickup was having a hard time blending with the neck humbucker (I prefer having the bridge pickup push the amp and the neck pickup more subdued personally), so I ended up mounting the neck pickup directly to the body, which sunk it about a quarter of an inch below the pickguard (stealth mode...) and finally was getting a blend.

Well that was about 3 weeks ago and I've been having a blast ever since. I've got about $150 in to this 'project' and I think it's a keeper.


I really like the Neck pickup voicing and with both pickups you get a nice twangy sound, here's the sound clip, tell me what you think:

http://www.box.net/shared/2o0vrtnfcv

What nobody ever told me (and maybe we should add this to the Index Page description...) is that these Electra Tele's are 24.5" scale, which is really cool and very comfy. But wait, it gets better:



The width at the nut is just shy of 1 5/8 ", super thin. I was thinking about changing the (non original) nut, but the wider spacing actually helps because the neck is so thin. You can also see that I just couldn't leave well enough alone and went looking for the Electra Logo one night, started chipping away at the headstock and there it is, the Gold logo on the Black headstock underneath that thick blue 'Buck Owens' paint job.

What I thought was just another Tele copy turned out to be a really cool guitar. I can't believe that these things went for $110 with a case back in the day. If you ever get the chance to play or pickup one of these inexpensive Tele's, by all means do it, they have great necks and play incredibly. Cheers, Mike.

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Electra Guitar Videos ===> http://www.youtube.com/user/mjm33mjm?feature=watch

You have pulled it off quiet nicely. That is a very nice balance between the pups and a really nice tone. It's a keeper for certain in my book. Congrats on a great job.

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Always give thanks for everyday, It may be your last so Rock On Semper Fi!!

Darn it! I was hoping to talk you out of that one some day.

I like it. The necks are comfortable and easy to play. Thanks for the sound check, that really gives us a complete discription and its cool too. By the way, what does the WC stand for on the model # of these guitars? With Case is my best guess.

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SlmGuy

Just to give you an idea of how skinny this Electra neck is, I took this picture showing the strings over the Gibson pickup so you can see how the strings don't exactly line up over the polepieces, I also had to ream out the bridge pickup hole to shoehorn that new pickup in:






That is a brilliant deduction! I too have wondered what that 'WC' stood for, in that era, the model number would have indicated the color. Confusingly the Phoenix line started using letters at the end of the model for color options. So 'with case' sounds very plausible in this instance, X189, what say you?

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Electra Guitar Videos ===> http://www.youtube.com/user/mjm33mjm?feature=watch

Very nice indeed!! I've a soft spot for Telecasters and fortunately have 2 Matsumoku super teles to scratch that itch!

Can you get the 'Andy Summers' sound out of this one?

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"... and on the eighth day, God created New Zealanders.

Because even the Australians need heroes."

I had also wondered if it had something to do with color. Mine has a natural wood finsh. some of the others had a wood finish anywhere from light to dark, but then you see painted models with it.

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SlmGuy

Nice axe! I'm amazed you found a bridge pickup to fit, as those are usually undersized - I whittled a mexifender down and it was all I could do to cram it in there. (edit- I see now how you whittled the bridge plate, I considered that too)

You got me on the letter-color schema. Why did some models use different numbers for different colors (like the slimlines) and other use one number with a letter for code. I don't know - maybe because they came from different factories and the factories set the model codes in the early days? (I have a theory that Hoshino used similar numbers for the same model in greco/ibanez/electra, with only the 1st digit changed, but some ibanez expert will have to confirm or deny that rumor)