Ok, I have to make a comment on this Blues...cause I do love Teles, they are just great guitars. They're very different than Strats though. A good friend, the Late Ted Greene, played a lot of ES-335s and heavily modified the electronics, but after he grew out of that sometime in the late 70s he started collecting 50s Teles. He could really make them sing. I have a '59 P-Bass, and I used to play it a lot, but I love my upright. My P-Bass is very similar, as it's not 100% original, but it's a players guitar. A collector wouldn't be interested in my P-Bass any more than they would your Tele, for a serious collector anyway, and a dealer who might be interested in them and would pay, would probably end up refinishing them and selling. Mine has a different year body than the neck, the body is a '63 burst, but the burst was different in the 60s with whitish primer, so I can tell with the little paint that is left on it that it's the wrong year. I bought the bass from a guy that was good friends with a good friend of mine (this is starting to sound like a recording contract, heh?) when I owned a vintage guitar store, the body was carved into an eagle, this was pretty common in the 60s and 70s after the summer of love... Anyway, I found a '63 body and put it together. Everything else was in the case, the neck and all the original electronics, bridge, et al, but there is was no finish on the neck, and it didn't have a Fender decal which I added. As you might be able to tell, this is not a bass that a serious collector would want. I also changed the tuners for a newer set of Gotoh that are original style, the reverse turn, as the originals were and I have the tuners in the case, but use a gig bag. Mine is a players bass. I never plan to sell it as it was such an important piece of my life at one point, but now my upright means more...and I hate to admit I bought a 2011 Bourgeois OMC Custom last year to fill a void that I always thought a vintage Martin would. That still might happen, not sure, but I love this Bourgeois, it's the first boutique type guitar I have owned but it sounds amazing and as far as an instrument, I would never feel cheated playing it. I probably told this story in this thread, I tend to follow it whenever I stop by the Antiquated forum, it seems to be popular and hangs around on the top page. I always find some cool stuff in here, damn you guys have some cool amps...
Mannn, I had a few vintage axes and some were straight up original, others with improved tuners, etc. I always liked playing improved vintage better. I had a 62 lp Jr, and it played awesome, but my buddy had a similar year gibby that everyone that played it just hated the neck. When they were still doing um with drawing knives and by hand and all that, variations could be enough to make one good and one suck. My uncle worked at the gibby factory in Kalamazoo when he was a young man. Mom grew up there. Pretty cool....
I don't currently have any amazing vintage items, but I have a '65 Airline Bobkat H-14 and a 70's Custom Tele Deluxe (MIJ) that see a lot of use. My newest electric is an '89.
Good enough for Hank Williams, good enough for you or I. Congrats on the acquisition. IMHO, Martin is the finest acoustic guitar one can own.
Dang, Now I have ANOTHER project to build! LOL. I am a guitar player and woodworker. Got a personalized plate lingering here.
Lets keep it going. The vintage Japanese Les Paul knockoff I found at Salvation Army awhile back. In great shape too. The Peavey I got free as the guy was about to drop it at Goodwill. I ask "Does that still work" ? "Yessir, we're just cleaning up at Church, do you want it" Yessir ! And a cool old National pedal steel my neighbor busted out the other day.
The Jalopy Journal
