Welcome to I Knocked Up This Tele, a site dedicated to the quest to build the Ultimate Left Handed Telecaster. Being a Leftie, I came to Telecasters quite late, there are limited opportunities for Left handed players to come to grips with them and if you are one of those rare players who plays left handed but with conventional stringing, so yes upside down, then that chance simply doesn't exist.

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Now the Stratocaster on the other hand works all ways round - move the strap button to the heel and away you go, reasonably well balanced in that mode and the cutaways kind of work for you but it doesn't translate to the Telecaster, you have to go the whole hog or it just doesn't work.

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So my introduction to the Telecaster came by way of a present. A few years back I was given a lovely Left Handed Squire 50s Classic Vibe, and once I'd come to terms with the Volume controls being (to me) the wrong way round, it just sort of fitted and I began to appreciate the elegance, simplicity and sheer ergonomics of such a classic piece of musical design, the balance, the slimness of the neck made that full C barre chord even easier - it just allowed an evolution of playing style that no other guitar could bring to the table.

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But its not quite as simple as just getting a Leftie, flipping the nut and slamming a new set of strings on. To get the most out of a Telecaster in this particular (perhaps bizarre) configuration you have to get under the hood and understand the complex mechanics of what makes the Telecaster such an amazing instrument in the first place and the purpose of this site is to explore those foibles or indeed features and perhaps find a few new things by coming at it from the opposite direction.

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About the Author

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Steve Flood is an accomplished but perhaps somewhat lateral thinking engineer (this was written by somebody else honest) and has been around Guitars and music for most of his life. Initially as a guitar player with the Band Red, and then as a Tech, touring the World with such diverse acts as Motorhead (Overkill, Bomber and Ace of Spades and was in the room with Eddie when THAT solo was recorded) all the way through to Dire Straits in the 80's, where sanity almost prevailed and from there moved into Recording Studios starting Master Rock in London which ended up having the first Focusrite Console in the world. He now almost has a proper job

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