Blueteleful Kahler Sustainer Tele

[4real]

I just realized I never put this guitar into the Nutz gallery...so here she is...the "blueteleful1"...completed in 2008 and been my main guitar ever since...



a more complete 'build thread' is here...projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic=37370&hl=blueteleful

This is based on a 25th aniversary squier, ash body with maple board...custom pained blue...

It features a flat mount Kahler trem, locking shaller fender branded tuners and LSR roller nut...



Very 'sanitary' (lol) clean look with no string trees, staggered locking tuners...this thing stays in tune for weeks!

Pickups are a rare mint condition vintage "wide range" in the bridge...plenty of "clang"...a unique sound. The neck is a new SCn tele with a great warm but clear sound.



I spent a lot of time trying to work out a solution to mount this oversized HB...tie in the bridge into the look and the more traditional scratch plate for the tele look. The solution came in the form of this aluminium plate, brushed and with 'racing stripes' in tortoiseshell....



Controls...



Forward volume control, tone at the back...gibson style selector, push pull volume to phase the neck pickup for a funky sound...the small toggle turns on the sustainer and power (lighting the blue LED) selecting the bridge pickup and bypassing the selector...the centre control is a push pull "drive control" and pulling it goes to harmonic mode...



For the sake of it, I put in a hidden "kill switch"...a momentary tiny button next to the LED...

As you guys are into wiring...this is a pic of the guts...



A bit of a squeeze. but was able to fit it all in an unmodified tele cavity in the end...even the battery that sits below the tone control...things were tidied up a bit after this pic was taken mid rewire...

The DIY sustainer circuit is tiny and sits in below the HB...



This pic shows how this driver surface mounts next to the SCN neck pickup and exactly whats in it...3mm coil, 4 ceramic craft mags and an ordinary steel core. You can see the sustainer playing the strings in the pic . The circuit tends to be biased to the G strings, you can see it has the greatest response but that the high e and b strings are also 'going off'...damping with a sustainer is crucial!

Ok ....SOUNDS

This was recorded roughly really late at night, the sustainers battery half dead after all that testing, but decent enough...

www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=869409

and a run down of the 'sounds' in the track...the sound is direct with minimal processing into a BR-600...no noise reduction or compression....just a little echo...no overdubs or setting changes, one take...there may be two parts as it went 'overtime'

After beat intro...
Bridge pickup...featuring the "kkkerrrraaanng" like sound of the the Fender "wide Range" pickup (much better through an amp of course)...all the sustainer sounds also use the neck pickup by default.
1:00 Neck and bridge solo
1:50 fundamental sustainer melody...kind of synthy
3:00 Funky N&B out of phase sound
4:00 harmonic sustainer melody...compare to previous sustainer sound
4:50 bluesy sound
5:20 switch to light drive harmonic sustainer (notes fade to harmonic)
6:20 harmonic slide (picked up plastic bic lighter) last note slides from driver to nut then trem to slack on b string
7:58 weird theremin like feedback effects
8:00 chords with harmonic feedback bass notes
10:00 jazzy neck pickup...

The track is entirely one guitar improvised against the beat...the bass was added after wards...

...

So...that's my "super tele"...but a good illustration of my "hot rod" philosophy...



Clean, classic, functional, unique...

You don't need to buy a really expensive guitar to get top of the line performance. The pickups, tuners and bridge are the best there is really...you may have to invest well with the parts that matter.

These things can take quite a while to develop, you need to look a little beyond wiring of course but just apply the same kind of approach to set up and performance as you would there...

And these days, there are plenty of darn good guitars like this about that make a fine basis for such a project. You do need to ensure that you have something that is at least decent, not just any pawn shop prize...and spend a lot of time living with the thing and getting together a look and function that will work.

Any advice would be to get a really cheap guitar and work the wiring AND the action and performance aspects to build up a few skills and get an idea of what is useful...then apply it to something decent like this and walk away with a fantastic unique high performance monster for a lot less than you might expect...pete


Future mods being considered....I have a fender noiseless strat pickup...considering a mid pickup using the tone control as a fader to fade it in regardless of selector...any thoughts?

[JFrankParnell]

freakin awesome! nice playing. I exalt you, sir

edit: I didnt turn on any music since listening to your tone demo. Couple of those little melodies having been on repeat in my head for a while now

[4real]

Thanks...don't record much...wind up computer and generally lazy...

Does give a good demo of the "klaaannng" of those FWRP and the jazzyness of those tele neck pickups...and the out of phase thing...

The sustainer's battery was going flat, hence it was developing that 'grainyness' a bit. The whole thing is just one guitar throughout with a consistent 'direct' sound recorded with headphones...but it shows a bit of the potential of the device, hard to believe that there are not overdubs in it...

Also, demos how ridiculously stable the tuning is...there is a part 2 of that 'jam' where I do some of the more therimin like sounds and extreme bends at that link...or at the end of that slide bit (using a plastic bic lighter just like jimi in watchtower did...lol) where the trem goes to complete slack...yet the guitar just springs back into tune

If interested, there are some really early sustainer tunes on the old $50 sustainer strat with basic amplifier and cheapo pickups...

I hadn't heard that stuff myself for a few years, I can still hear that tune now...weird!

[Yew]

That gets an 8.4/10 (where the maximum score is a 9/10, as we still need to aim for perfection)

^^

[Deleted]

fantastic work!! looks very good. if i did such think i would look totally abused.!!!!
great work 4real!

[4real]

Thanks....Well, there is a look to something a bit 'reliced' even practical as it doesn't get to precious i guess.

One of the benefits of doing work with cheaper guitars was to work them to be as good as they could be and experiment on them and make mistakes...this guitar changed the direction a little to seeing how far one could go. To be fair though, it is probably one of the most expensive squiers anyone is going to see....and it is based on a high end squier at that, a 25th anniversary model. The only thing remaining of the original guitar though is the neck and body wood...everything else was built to highest end fender specs or beyond really. The trem system alone cost a lot ($100 tuners, $150 bridge, $40 LSR...plus permanent mods to install)...apparently the bridge pickup is worth more these days than the entire guitar!

Most often though, people mention the colour and how 'pretty' it looks (well, ok women)...LOL...actually you can use 'mojo' to some effect, if a guitar looks good, there is some perception that it will sound 'good', if the guitar is pretty people seem more to think the sound is pretty...if you play a strat clean, you sound like mark knophler...upside down and you are hendrix...

The main things i look for in these instruments besides being decent to play is that they stay in tune, sound good, no noise and reliable. All such things can make you appear to be a bit less of a player especially in the kind of contexts that I find myself playing...which is often low volume one to one. This kind of thing is important if you want to get support for what you are trying to do. What I found was consistently people would ask, 'so you play guitar, play me something'...it's invaluable to have an electric guitar that can do that kind of thing and not be infected by stuff like noise that the average person will see as a fault in the instrument generally. A lot of people generally, will think you should be playing an acoustic guitar or at least something that 'looks' like a jazz instrument and accept sinking money in such an instrument over the expense of amps and guitars, especially after all that work and expense...the end result doesn't 'look' and sound as if it was worth the money.

Plus...I wanted to see how far one could take a cheap guitar (I got it in bits from ebay) and make something of quality and unique from it.

Until the strat came back recently, it served me well for a few years as my main if only instrument so I think I got a lot from it and will for years to come...

This guitar was put together slowly though over perhaps year or more...as were my other guitars, picking up parts as i could afford and tossing ideas around while i was waiting. I have yet another guitar in the closet but really, I don't need another instrument nor afford to do it quite how i'd like at the moment...so i guess it will sit there for quite some time. Interestingly though, each are indicative of a particular time and place I've lived, so there is some sentimental side to them...this guitar is also most likely the last 'sustainer guitar' i am likely to build, and the culmination of the DIY design on my part I suspect.

[popsaka]

...Geeze Leweeze that is one cool stringed musical device you've created! ...and sum mighty nifty pluckin' so's we could hear what its all about... I'm just wowed beyond wowing and too old to be jealous but still achin' none the less!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ya'know besides all that, you've also devincied a sound sculpture... a real object d'art! I'm off to check out your Strat now...