Nashville Tele, Part 2
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I'm laughing at myself. I had "Blackie" and sold it because I was going to "get out" of electric guitars. Well, that didn't last long and eventually I found myself wanting another Nashville Tele, although this time I wanted a real Nashville Tele with all 3 pups. Off to Ebay!
The stock configuration didn't last long. Oh, it sounded good alright, but, what with a Tele bridge and neck, it was too much Telecaster and I was really interested in something a little different. So, it was back to the same humbucker/Tele configuration I had on "Blackie". Before I did that, though, I also ran this guitar as a single pickup "Esquire". That was kind of interesting and it really did seem to "loosen up" the bridge pickup.
That's a Fender Relic Nocaster bridge pickup. Everything else is stock. The 5-way is rigged just like "Blackie" was: single, single/Tele, Tele, Tele/hum, hum. It's simple to wire and easy to use.
The string spacing was awful on the original nut. I just filled the slots in with baking soda/superglue and re-cut them and if you look carefully you can see just how much space I was able to get, plus now the strings are equally spaced. Otherwise, I like the Nashville neck. It has a flatter than vintage radius and medium-jumbo frets and feels good.
I'm not going to sell this one.
After running the neck bucker and Nocaster bridge for awhile, I decided I liked that combo well enough to migrate it to my B-Bender Tele. I was also in the process of building another Relic Telecaster, and that satisfied my "traditional" Tele niche. So, the only reasonable thing to do was restore the Nashville back to a 3-pickup Nashville!
What we have here pickup-wise is an American Std neck, Tex-Mex Strat middle, and '52 RI bridge. The Am Std neck is outstanding, the Tex Mex Strat snarls like it should, and the '52 RI has great twang and character. All individual positions sound great and both combo are great. All in all, this really is an outstanding and versatile guitar, IMHO. Looks cool, too.
I'm not going to sell this one.
One thing I'm considering doing to this one is putting a GE Smith style bridge on it. I have a 6-saddle Stew Mac bridge sitting here and it's just a matter of cutting off the front neatly and cleanly and slapping it on. Like this:
