Hot Rod Tele

Our customer Daniel wanted to customize and hot rod his Tele Thinline.

The guitar came with a black pickguard,  Les Paul style wiring, and Fender's version of P90 single coils. We sourced a paisley pickguard blank and then had our friends at Pickguard Heaven cut the outline (cheaper for the customer since P/G Heaven has the templates and tooling to do this work with less labor involved.) We then custom routed the body and pickguard to fit Daniel's Custom Shop Strat pickups. Next we used one of our favorite wiring mods. We use a 5 way super switch and a push/push pot to achieve a very versatile sounding guitar. This mod allows you to maintain all of your usual five strat sounds, and get two series/humbucker sounds. When the switch is in the second position (neck and middle pups in parallel) and you engage the push/push switch, it connects the neck and middle pickups in series, turning the two single coils into one humbucker! The same thing happens in the fourth position. By just pushing down on the tone knob you can connect the middle and bridge pickups in series making them a humbucker. The series connection boosts the output and lowers the resonant peak of the pickups giving a fatter, darker, louder tone. Obviously we did lots of custom work on this guitar, but on a stock strat this wiring is achieved without altering the stock appearance of the guitar. We love it!

Locating and routing the pickguard for single coils and controls.

The connections

The result

21 and 1/2 Frets

This brown hunk is a Gibson Les Paul Professional, that the customer asked us to strip the hardware from, so that he can have it fully refinished.  While we were at it, Jeff gave it a full refret.  We'll update with the finished product when we do the final build and it should be a spectacular guitar.  Check out that last fret!

Today's GTS Workbench Feature...

David Skinner's 20th Anniversary PRS in for new zebra Fralin pickups and control modifications.  We removed the original controls intact and converted the rotary pickup selector to a Swithcraft 3-way.  David wanted individual volume controls for each pickup with dual/single coil switching options, so push-pull pots were installed in place of the standard master volume and tone controls.  We also included a mini CTS tone pot in the compartment to insure the exact "voicing" that David specified for this project.  The factory shielding was also upgraded with additional coats of conductive paint and properly grounded copper foil to eliminate any noise issues.    

Custom wiring is a GTS specialty, we have many wiring options for any pick up combination (Tele, Strat, Humbuckers. etc.)  Feel free to contact us if you have a special request.