209 – 100120 ZT Tele – Zachary Handcrafted Guitars | Bass| Pedals | Strings

Inspiration

I always said that a Telecaster without a Tele pickup in the bridge position is NOT a Telecaster and is a sacrilege. Although only a tinkerer would make a guitar into a mongrel, I saw this reliced Tele with one P90 and I fell in love with the concept. For some reason it occurred to me that having one P90 may be quite legit. At the same time, even just one Humbucker in a Tele is revolting to me. I cannot really explain why. Maybe because a P90 is also a single coil and it really has that historic vibe to it.

So here it is. This is an amazing guitar on multiple levels. Of course it sounds thicker and creamier than a Tele with a Tele bridge pickup. It does not have the chime of the Telecaster pickup but it has girth and if the tone is turned down a bit, it gives this unique growly tone, which is captivating when used with overdrive.

The body is made of Obeche wood. This is a very light and soft wood I had for about 20 years, so I decided to use it for this series of guitars. Obeche wood is very light and very soft. This is definitely NOT a hardwood. This guitar comes in completed at an incredible 5.3 lbs. Simply incredible. Compare this to a 70's Les Paul or any Les Paul for that matter, which is usually above 10 lbs; twice as heavy. The neck is also lightweight Mahogany and short scale. The hardware is also light weight, including the knobs, which Aluminum, as well as the tuners are lightweight with plastic knobs. The bridge saddles are also uniquely aluminum on this guitar. You can imagine that playing this guitar is a special experience.

Obeche is a wood from Africa and its just a level above Balsa wood in terms of hardness. Yes, it dents very easily and soft wood like this is actually much harder to work with than hard wood is. All screw holes must be fortified to hold screws and you can guess that this wood dents very easily. So it is not possible or even prudent to make a guitar out of Obeche, which is NOT reliced in the first place. In fact the instrument is naturally reliced as its being made and shop handled: shop-damaged.
I am perfectly fine with this because I love the organic vibe of a hand-crafted guitar, made even more appealing viscerally by distressing.
The way larger guitar factories deal with softer woods, is to make it with programmed robot machines and put a thick plastic finish on it for protection. You may even own one of those and it may have cost you under $200, or if you are a real idiot you paid a few thousand dollars for it, because it was endorsed and promoted heavily.

This guitar is the first in this series of light-weight Telecaster-style Zachary guitars. Following this guitar you will find 4 more guitars in this series, all made of Obeche and all with a vintage Gibson short 624 mm scale necks but all with different historic Zachary Hand-Wound Telecaster pickups. This series was in-fact a study and fabrication of the various Telecaster pickups from the 50s and 60s (not featured on this guitar).

After this guitar with the P90, I delved into researching and recreating 4 different period-correct Telecaster pickups and created 4 different ZT Teles to use them in. Take a look at the following 4 guitars to see the rest of the guitars in this series.