Crawling Toward The Line: The Gypsy One

Well, I'm pleased to introduce to you, something new from Jookyland and a bit of a first all around.

There is still a bit of work to do - the strings are buzzing like honey-chasing-hornets and a string tree and jack plate are yet to arrive, and of course I really need to put brass saddles on it. Oh, and I'm changing the knobs, of course. But despite all this, I can plug in and play and The Gypsy One is now in the land of the living, and I'm finding it a little compelling.

From the start, the idea for this was to make my own version of the famous Rosewood Telecaster. This entailed putting a rosewood veneer on the top, shaping it to the body and then 'binding' the edges with some serious rust. I think you could say that it didn't go smoothly.

After this of course, all things have gotten messy and the veneer has been split, raised, scraped, burned with an iron, generally nibbled-at-the-edges and treated with a variety of antique varnishes and god knows what else.

I have the 90-a-day cough to prove it, and at the moment it can't be played near an open fire.

The rust on the sides overlap the front in a graceless degradation, and the back is pure rusted iron.

I'm rather amazed how well the finish has turned out. The really hard part was trying to get the shade of the rust to match the wood, and I think it is pretty (tonally) close in most lights.

Tuners are Wilkinson EZ-Locking jobbies, which look great and are solid.

The pickups are handwound by Jess Loureiro based on the original '50s Broadcaster/Nocaster ones and they sound awesome thru my Fender Bassman (OK, it's a model but as close as I'm likely to get).

In the end I went with a maple board for more authentic Tele-ness rather than authentic Rosewood-Tele-ness, and I think that is the right decision as it is pretty bloomin' twangulistic..

It's not meant to be a relic or a tribute it is just my take on things I like, and I have to say - I like it a lot.

Now, that is a nice end to the week... :)