This is the last of the batch of guitars from the Country Club run, So a brief recap here.
So last July (2018) I was laid up and off work and recuperating in the Shed fiddling around with Guitars, so I sent a general invite out for visitors to join me in the Shed and up pops Ron my old buddy from Dire Straits days - I went off and did other stuff building Studios and the like, and Ronnie stayed with Mark and later went of to work for the likes of Jeff Beck and others - Ronnie immediately said "well lets build a guitar then, I've got some pickups". So we duly amassed some parts courtesy of ebay - half a dozen necks and a quartet of bodies, so what started off as a Guitar duly escalated into several, as these things do, and we ended up with a pair of Strats - see the post on the fifty quid Strats (and we sold one) and a pair of Teles - the Black Bound one and this little beauty.
I had had a pair of Tele necks sitting around for a while and this one had a particularly nice woody ring to it and the body was one of those waifs and strays sitting on ebay needing a home, and the two just seemed to fit together quite naturally - its partner in crime went on to the accidental Telecaster. So after much fettling with it - full level and dress and a proper nut put on it and a bit of shimming, the two became one. Didn't do too much to the body other than to fill the miscellaneous holes with matchsticks and cover them over. Now with Ronnie EVERY project has to involve matchsticks - he is famous as the man who salvaged the Synclavier on the Love Over Gold tour with matchsticks, but that's another story which perhaps shouldn't be told. This one was feeling good, so I donated an Armadillo bridge from Michael in Texas. solid milled brass which gave a certain ring to it - the guitar just felt like it deserved it.
The pickups are a lovely pair of Fender Noiseless and they appear to be prototypes rather than mark IIIs. The scratchplate that they were on had certainly seen some use by a certain finger picking guitarist who shall remain nameless. Still trying to figure out whether we need to tame them or not and the control plate is still an ongoing element, but the overall shape of the thing is there and its a player and up there with the rest of the batch - a good productive run.
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