Paul can tell you much more about the guitar than I can as I only have the info he posted when he offered it in the Gear Exchange Over to you Paul

Anyway, as he said, the guitar does have a lot of mojo. Seeing it in the flesh, the stripped down/visible grain finish looks really good. It's pretty well balanced and the neck is really slim. It came with a really low action. I changed this by raising it just a touch when I put on some new strings and then re-adjusted the intonation. This was purely to change the guitar more to suit me, there was absolutely nothing wrong with it the way it was. The guitar does have a 'vibe' of it's own and you really want to pick it up and play it.

I think it sounds and plays great. The neck pickup is very muted in comparison to the bridge, which makes for a great middle position sound. The neck pickup sounds great in a bluesy context and the bridge really 'snaps'. I like the added tonal options with the push/pull controls. The humbucker really rounds off the bridge pickup sound very nicely when it's selected. The guitar suits having the volume rolled off just a touch when playing, although sounds just as good wide open. I did a short demo last night after all my tweaking to let you guys hear how it sounds. It's sort of funky and brash sounding as I really love that 'skanking' sound you can make with a good Tele.

DD Telefunken

Once again, thanks to Paul for the swap. I'm going to have lots of fun with this guitar

David, I'm SO pleased you like her.

This was the first attempt at routing my own body for a guitar.

It started life as a humble Butterscotch Blonde Squier that I took in payment for some work I did on a match trigger for a target rifle. I loved the neck, but the "tone" just wasn't there.

I hunted around at a local timber reclamation merchant and found a suitably-sized chunk of alder. I used the original body as the routing template. The first rebuild simply used all the donor parts from the original. It sounded better, but it still lacked "something".

The next stage was to replace the top-loader bridge with a string-through. It improved things but the tone still didn't do the "paint-peeling thang".

That's when I started looking around various websites for possible replacement pups. Quite by accident, I dropped on the Axetec site, listened to the soundclips and was hooked!. Less than ten minutes later I'd bought the Steel Twins - and so began my long and friendly association with Keith, Axetec and Iron Gear.

It was at this rebuild that the original white, single-ply scratchplate was binned in favour of the black one.

The bridge pup is a stacked humbucker with four conductors. This gave rise to the various tonal options to be had. With both pots pushed in, she behaves like a normal Tele, with the bridge pup running as a single coil. With just the volume pot pulled out, the bridge becomes a parallel humbucker. With just the tone pot pulled out, the bridge pup swaps phase. Pull both pots out and the bridge becomes a series humbucker, back in phase. (I think ).

It was at this point a couple of friends invited me for a jam session. Both are into pointy heavy metal. Both got the shock of their lives when they heard the guitar in full snarly mode. I was careful NOT to point out the stacked Iron Gear, and the guitar looks pretty much standard. When they had a go, I simply pushed the pots back in without them noticing. Their consternation at not being able to get the same sounds was quite comical!

She got the nickname "Quatermass" that night and it stuck.

I can't wait to get home so I can have a listen to David's soundclip!

How come she never sounded like that when I had her?

Fickle!

Sounds stunning, David!