Marc Stone
From:
Louisiana, USA
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Posted 23 Sep 2011 6:48 pm |
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This is a great price for a fine and relatively rare instrument that includes over $400 in upgrades plus all of the original parts and no modifications to the guitar other than the solder points for the pickups. Absolutely no mods to any other part of the instrument.
Rare, super cool Fender Telesonic. A high-end, chambered mahogany, Tele shaped guitar with Gretsch style De Armond pickups and Les Paul style controls. Only made from 1998-2004. Beautifully crafted, excellent materials and a unique array of great tones.
I wanted one of these for years, finally got this one about 2 years ago. The stock pickups are very cool and part of what sets this guitar apart from any similar designs, but TV Jones makes a great pickup called the T-Armond that is a repro of the Dynasonics that the De Armonds in the Telesonic are modeled after. After gigging the guitar a few times, I found the bridge pickup a little thin and weak and the neck pickup to be a bit out of control on the bottom end. The TV Jones site claimed that the T-Armonds would solve these problems, so I gave them a shot at $160 each delivered plus the cost of having a luthier custom cut the baseplates so they would fit in the Telesonic with no routing. Worth every penny and more, the TV Jones just killed the stock pickups. Much fuller bridge, better defined neck and much better balanced to one another than the stock pickups, so they remain in the guitar. The original pickups are in perfect working order and included with the guitar.
The previous owner had replaced the stock bridge, which did not have individual saddles, with an upgraded fully adjustable wrap-around bridge. The original bridge is included. The guitar intonates beautifully and has been professionally set up and maintained since I've owned it. From the looks of it, the previous owner also took excellent care of the guitar. The neck is is in perfect shape with very minimal fret wear. It's a well maintained, low-milage guitar.
The only permanent modification to any part of this guitar is the the fact the leads on the pickups have been removed from their original solder joints. Great care was taken not to rout the guitar for the new pickups. This guitar can be returned to complete original factory stock with the included original parts in about 20 minutes.
Sonically, this guitar does great clean chord melody jazzy stuff on the neck pickup, nice single note blues stuff when pushed, and good raunchy rock n roll. The DeArmond style pickups have a lot more grind and grunge than stock Tele pickups. Think early 70s Townshend. Great classic Gretsch-style Rockabilly tones too. Early Rock and Roll heaven through a tweed. A completely different animal then a standard Tele, the only similarities are appearance and the great neck feel of a good Tele. Plays very smoothly. Very woody sounding guitar with lots of sustain, and the weight of the guitar is very well distributed from neck to body so it balances beautifully on a strap.
The guitar has been babied. Has a couple of very faint surface scratches, no dings and plenty of shine on the finish. The largest scratch (which is about 1/2" long and barely through the finish) as well as a paint chip under the bridge, are detailed in the photos. The main photos of the body and neck are a little dark, the detail photos were taken with a better camera and better light and show how nice the finish is on the guitar.
I gigged this guitar on and off and it performed beautifully, but I don't want to subject it to the abuse of regular stage work. I love it to death, but it has to make way for other guitar goodies.
Here is a good discussion of Telesonics on the Gear Page from 2006 - http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=135934
The only ones I can find for sale are 2 on eBay, both with BIN of over $1,800.
I'll take $1250 plus shipping and insurance for this one, which includes well over $400 in upgrades as well as all the parts to keep this collectible guitar all-original. High quality hard shell case included, plus orig Fender manual and literature.
Paypal prefered.
Thanks for looking. Please feel free to contact me with any questions.
Last edited by Marc Stone on 16 Mar 2012 3:44 am; edited 4 times in total |
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