My New Telecaster

During the course of last year, people kept getting me gift certificates for the music store. I actually appreciate this a good deal, because I can build them up and get useful things that I can't otherwise afford.

So on Saturday, just after arriving home, I played with the baby for a few moments. And then, not able to stand it anymore, I rushed to the music store. I had used my gift certificates, at my wife's urging, to put a black Fender Telecaster on layaway, and I was one payment away from finishing it off. Unfortunately, I still don't have it, because I immediately had to hand it over to be "set up" (basically a set-up is where they polish it, dress the frets, and set the height of the strings.)

But I did get to see it - and it is shiny, new, and black. It is gorgeous, and although it isn't the colour I originally wanted, it is mine - I looked around at the other Telecasters and their various colour schemes, and I didn't feel the same about them - they weren't my new Telecaster. :-)

It is a lot shinier than my other electric guitars, which are all from the seventies or mid-eighties. And you know what the crazy thing is? these days, most people buying a new guitar want to turn the shiny spanking-new instrument into what I have - the process is called "relicing." Basically, people will take a new guitar to a luthier (a guitar builder/refinisher) and have him beat the snot out of it until it looks like it was owned by a drunken rock star who dropped or banged it on stage every night for twenty years.

The process, specifically, involves making the pickups and scratch plates go from white to green or yellow (usually by soaking them in coffee and then sun-bleaching them), shoe-polishing the neck to make the finish look aged, and then smacking the finish off the body with keys, coat hangers, files, planers, or belt sanders (if you're in a hurry.) It is roughly the equivalent to taking a brand new Mahogany coffee table, and making it look like you've used it for outdoor patio furniture for the last twenty years, without ever using lemon-oil.

My older guitars - since I've taken care of them - have some of this look to them. The pickups are greenish, and on one of my guitars, the neck finish is yellow. But the bodies have only a few small marks and dents, and very little paint is missing. From a distance of more than three feet, you'd never notice. This is because I take care of them. I don't want them to look beaten up. I cringe when anything happens to them.

I have no intention of deliberately taking twenty years off the life of my new guitar. The other guitars have earned their battle-scars, and the right to have yellowing pickups. This one's just a baby - and that's the way I plan to treat her. :-)