So this was the Guitar that started off the Tele Quest, a standard Mexican built blonde Squire Classic Vibe which came to me with a right handed nut on it. I left it untouched for quite a while just to get the feel of it. I tend to do this a lot with builds, put the basics together in a buzzy rush, play it for a while and see what feels right and see what bugs me and then maybe change a few things, I have no delivery schedule on any of this as it is for me so I can take my time.
With pickups, I do have a real penchant for the Gibson P90 and you will see these feature a lot as these posts progress. To me, not being a purist, it was a logical thing to do to try one in the neck position, as I had one lying around from another build, and it fattened things up nicely to my ears. Luckily the guitar body was routed for a Humbucker, so dropping in a dogear was a pretty straight forward exercise. This then gave me the challenge of trying to find a bride pickup that could hold its own against it, and I came across a Vintage Hot Rod on ebay and that certainly did the trick, a surprisingly well balanced pair.
The next step was to take a look at a bridge upgrade - six saddles makes sense somehow, as it removes that tiny element of compromise needed that I always found when setting up the intonation on stock Teles. At the same time, I was also thinking that the Pine body lacked a bit of zing - had a great character, but these was something missing. Now with a Strat, that's an easy fix, go spend $50 on a sustain block and bolt it on the back of the bridge and away you go. So the hunt was on for a hunk of brass shaped like a Tele bridge and even harder a left handed Tele bridge.
After a lot of calls and Googling, I came across Armadillo Guitars in Texas, and they has this site full of really serious looking cool stuff, so I dropped them a mail, saying this is great, do you fancy making me a custom left handed set? Expecting the normal rejection telling me that the demand for left handed kit is so limited, I was overjoyed to get a mail back from them saying of course we do :).
So I ordered up a full set of Brass Bridge, Saddles, Control Plate and Knobs and my hat is off to Michael over there for rising to the challenge, attending to the detail and allowing me to share his craft on my guitar
The result is outstanding. The guitar sounds and plays as good as it looks.