A vintage Tele anyone??? Some have paid over $30K for
one and I doubt those were even playable or just barely.
Everyone knows how great vintage Teles are. ... are they? Are you sure?
Here I set out to make the best vintage Tele ever made. My goal was to
stay true, as much as possible, to the original character of a Blackguard
Tele from the early 50s. I used the same woods, same hardware and same
specs, to the point where improvements had to be made but without taking
away from the genuine historically correct vibe.
Unlike Fender Telecasters, new or old, this F1 is really
playable and is a Z all the way. So playable in fact that you wouldn't
be able to put it down. The bridge pup is so biting and bright that I
actually get nausea from its tone playing it. Its the way it should be.
If you want smooth and mellow, get an archtop. The pickups are great and
the way I have it wired, with just a traditional 3 way switch, when both
pickups are on it sounds like Donald Duck. I may install a push/pull pot
for the tone pot, to get one more sound from it. I use ZOG 9s on it of
course and the action is low and the neck as straight as an arrow. There
is nothing more to it really. Just a board of Swamp Ash, with a great
neck, fat frets and overwound pickups. Its all you need and when you turn
it up the tone makes you sick to your stomach but in a great way. If you
play it long enough and if you have a sensitive stomach, you will actually
puke from it. In a nutshell, this is the criteria for a good Telecaster
and worth every penny of the $30K ... LOL
I scrambled to get one more guitar in this year, in order to make it a
record number of 16 guitars made this year. Not exactly mass-production
but it makes me seem productive at least. Making guitars by hand is slow
work and a lost art. Making instruments by hand comes down to actually
being considered absurd these days. Almost like an antisocial freakish
thing to do, like some mad scientist constructing a Frankenstein in a
dungeon. This is why I love it. A combination of big endorsement dollars
for artists and a very uneducated and ignorant consumer base, has made
handcrafting guitars unappreciated and unpopular. The bottom line is that
there is no money in it for anyone making guitars by hand. Not for the
builder and not the professional player. Its not only a lost art because
of this, it has also become a totally stupid thing to do economically.
Its a good thing I don't do it for the money. I sure feel lonely however.
What's next? A terrible world in which everyone actually
stops playing the guitar and instead used digital boxes to program all
of their playing in a virtual world. Kind of a mixture of video games,
computers and consumer electronics gone to the extreme, with the absence
of any actual playing. You say its here already? Playing the guitar already
has started to become absurd, just look around you. Only old farts are
playing and listening to guitar players. Will it ever come to the point
where the actual playing of a guitar, once thought of as the coolest thing
in the world will seem stupid and goofy? I think its just around the corner.
My motivation for
this guitar.
It seems like I enjoy getting aggravated and this is why
I sometimes read guitar magazines. Its the fastest way for me to get angry.
Guitar magazines are disturbing to me. Here are people who claim to be
impartial, yet all of their income comes from advertisers. Their main
elegance is definitely not to the reader, its to their advertisers and
very importantly, potential advertisers. I found out to my surprise a
few years ago that guitar magazines have no interest in reporting the
news about the guitar world, they only give you selective information,
always directly tied to some product being marketed, be it a new CD, new
gear, new book, comeback of an old artist, etc. Everyone is selling something
and the guitar magazines are there to promote it for a fee. Its purely
commercial and not for the sake of information or education. If you get
any info or learn anything at all, its only a byproduct of their marketing
goals.
Recently a guitar magazine article caught my eye which
was about "boutique Tele builders". Apparently they all claim
to be making handmade instruments but I can tell a handmade guitar in
my sleep and those are NOT handmade guitars. In fact I always wondered
why a supposed handmade guitar looks just like a mass produced CNC-made
guitar. It looks like it because it IS a CNC-made guitar.
As CNC computer manufacturing has trickled down to the
hobbyist-tinkerer, pre-manufactured bodies and necks have been available
to anyone for quite a low price. Many have jumped onto this opportunity
and started assembling Fender-style guitars from these premanufactured
parts. Of course they look or play nothing like a handmade guitar. Yet
its all deceivingly presented as handmade. The ignorant consumer will
never question it, nor will they even care if its handmade or not. Some
are even clever enough to build from scratch a body or even a full guitar,
take lots of pictures of the process and post it on their dull websites.
I could not figure out why any self-respecting craftsman would ever disclose
what they do so willingly and show it to the world. What purpose was there
in doing that? Then I realized the trick and why it is worth doing. If
they put up the building process of one guitar, they will deceptively
establish themselves as "real builders". The dummies will then
line up to ask for a handmade Strat or Tele, supposedly built like the
pictures show. At this point the marketing has been effective and the
"builder" can just simply order their kit parts and assemble
the kit Fender for the dummies ready to buy, who will then believe they
got a handmade guitar. They have no clue what a handmade guitar is anyway.
The "builder" is now in business, can make some money and is
even presented as a great "craftsman" in guitar magazines. It
would certainly be unbearably uncomfortable for me to be in the company
of these scammers. On some level, I don't blame them really because as
I said, there is no money in making guitars by hand and very few have
the skill to do it anyway. "Handmade" is just a nice marketing
term, which is thrown around quite easily, to really mean nothing.
What is handmade you ask? Quite simply it is starting
with raw lumber and turning that into a finished instrument with every
process guided by the hand, mind and soul of one individual from start
to finish. You can see why in this day and age this is not economically
viable.
The roots of the Custom Shop boutique scam can be blamed
on the Fender company. They started it all by taking bodies and necks
from the assembly line as they came off the CNC machine and assembling
them separately with the same parts by some invented person who stuck
a sticker of their signature on the back of the headstock. They call these
guitars Fender "Masterbuilt" instruments from the Fender Custom
Shop. I bet this person who's signature is on the back of the headstock
could never even build a guitar on their own and by hand. So the whole
process is totally bogus and a pure marketing scam. You recall 20 years
ago they were predicting that the boomer market will be huge and smart
industries will take advantage of it and win big. Well, the guitar industry
did just that.
Seeing how well this scam worked, literally hundreds of
hobbyist tinkerers around the world followed the Fender example and started
ordering kit bodies and necks doing it themselves, just as the Fender
Custom Shop did. They too became "highly respected luthiers, handcrafting
guitars" for a premium price. This trend is great for the actual
CNC kit parts manufacturers who do most of their business, not with individuals
who want to assemble kit guitars but with these "luthier businesses"
who make up the boutique market you find today.
This of course aggravates me and was the anger behind
my motivation for making the F1 you see on this page. I created a true
handmade vintage Tele. In the true sense of the word.
Without my anger towards this guitar magazine article,
the guitar industry and the guitar consumer, this guitar would not exist.
As simple as that.
I have recently been psychoanalyzed again
and been given advice by yet another person. This time by young Travis
Howell . He finds my anger upsetting but ironically, I think I got him
angry and this is what he has to say.
Your attitude is just, well in a word
- ridiculous..
With experience comes wisdom, humility,
appreciation, and many other great things.. It sounds like you might want
to think about that one.
What's so funny to me is you have all
this anger for people, for music shops, for guitar companies and yet you
seem to ask people straight up to believe you and spend thousands of dollars
on something they haven't even heard yet, or played.
On top of that you hate all those people
and companies who don't make guitars for players, and so you just traded
that for respect, attitude, appreciation and a couple other things..
I kinda liked going on your site checking
out new shit, reading what you have posted that wasn't negative (which
there is very little of unfortunetely) but I don't think I'll be coming
back..
When it comes to my Paps, he is an incredible
person, very smart, and a musician from hell but cares very little for
your business mostly because of your failure to free yourself from your
anger, arrogance, and your precious little issues.
Well, what I want to say to young Travis
Howell is that without anger there would not be any Z guitars and would
not be any creativity on my part. I mean, what the hell would even motivate
me? Without anger there is no fire in my belly, so to speak. I would have
no passion to do anything. There would be no reason to live really. I
would just be another person with a lobotomy, another perfectly socialized
robot of the new world order. Anger and negativity is essential to my
existence and I embrace it. Anger is what makes me want to get up in the
morning and what makes me want to create and change the world ever so
slightly. Without anger there would be no purpose and no reason for me
to be moved to do anything. Anger has to be the best motivator in the
world. People have moved mountains motivated by anger. Some are motivated
to do major evil and some are motivated to do major good. I think Zachary
guitars are good, so its a positive way to use my anger. You take my anger
away and its the end of me. If you like Zachary guitars and like what
I do, what the hell do you care where my motivation comes from. Or would
you rather me make another kit guitar at boutique prices?
Motivation is a complex topic and its
not pretty in any way. Society is not accepting of anger because of a
certain agenda which is a whole other large topic for discussion. The
bottom line is to be motivated, wherever your motivation comes from. As
I look around the great problem in the world today is lack of motivation.
As the world moves more and more toward diminishing individuality, any
type of self expression must be labeled as antisocial and unacceptable.
The masters know that if there is no anger, there is no revolution.
Living without anger is like living without
a belief in a higher power. Its a meaningless and purposeless existence
and the goal of a future world on the horizon.
I wish you all a great new year and remember to either
stay angry or get angry. It will move you forward, whatever your pursuit
is.
Remember, arrogance must be earned. If you feel you earned it, then go
ahead display and celebrate your arrogance, you have earned it.
Only those who have not earned it cannot deserve to be arrogant. Arrogance
is a gift for your achievement in any field, its the prize for accomplishment.
People without arrogance scare me. They are freaks in my book. They don't
believe in themselves and have no vision for their own destination.
Witnessing arrogance is an inspiration for the dedicated and a great insult
to the underachiever. Arrogance is simply a tool in setting the bar high
for yourself, the end result being a higher level of achievement.
LOL, this sure is a very different type of guitar website.
