1959 Replica

[Tonar8352]

This thing turned out beautiful.  My thanks to Glade Rasmussen for his as always perfect fret job and final set up. Also to Adam Jackson my favorite wood worker in the world for adding the correct doweling to the body and real clay dots to the neck. A fine guitar is in the attention to detail and this one has it.

Body is a lightweight Alder finish with Valspar and McFadden’s Lacquers done by me.
Total Vintage 59 Roundback; compound radius neck with a Brazilian board on 1/4 sawn maple that wound up with a lot of nice flame. I lacquered the headstock and the end of the neck and oiled all the playing surface so it looks and feels like a vintage guitar.
Vintage clay dots added by Adam Jackson
1 5/8 non-bleached bone nut done by Glade Rasmussen.
6100 frets leveled and finished by Glade during final set up.
Callham H/SRV special wind Fralin pickups, RS Guitarworks 280K volume and audio taper tone pots with a Lux white phonebook cap.
Trem and saddle assembly are exact 59 repo's from the UK. I am going to change the block to a DeTemple this one is a little to dark for me.
Kluson Series II vintage repro inline tuners.

Beautiful dark Brazilian board with clay dots.

Every fret is finished perfectly.

Beautifully cut and finished bone nut.

I like these TonePros series II a lot.

 

[Eric Banjitar]

Wow what a beautiful guitar! I lust for it.

Did you sand the back of the neck to bare wood or is that a diferent finish?

Great, detailed work.

 

[NonsenseTele]

Beautifull!!

 

[dmraco]

Leo would be proud.  And Jealous :icon_biggrin:

 

[Corey P.]

I can understand why they didn't let wood with figuring that nice out the door in the early days, no one would've excepted less.  Absolutely gorgeous guitar, and the attention to detail right down to the dowels, I'm sure, gives it a vibe a reissue could never touch.

Did you sand the back of the neck to bare wood or is that a diferent finish?

He actually masked off that area when finishing the rest of the neck, as shown here: Work in Progress thread.

Pretty awesome.

 

[llmtelecaster]

Dang that's pretty!

 

[Alfang]

Looks awesome as usual from Tonar

It just hit me, we've talked here from time to time about resale value of Warmoths not really being what we think they should be. 

I really think a Warmoth Axe built by Tonar, along with all his special setup guys, and a little Tonar symbol somewhere( it could be in the control cavity) would fetch a pretty penny.

He could be the next Dumbel.........I know I'd pay good money for this '59 replica

 

[gobig2000]

That is a stunning neck looks beautiful! :hello2:

 

[Jusatele]

I drooled all over those pics, nice axe

 

[Tonar8352]

Thank for all your very kind words.

Unfortunately this beautiful guitar does not sound as good as it looks.  My first impression when I played it unplugged was that it sounded choked or like it had a wet blanket on it. I thought since I’m so used to maple necks maybe I was hearing the difference between the Brazilian board and a maple neck so I took it out to the music room and plugged it in.

I used my Blackface Deluxe Reverb to test it.  I have found the secret to vintage Fender amps it to turn all the tone knobs to 0 and turn the volume all the way to 10 then add a little bit of bass and some times a tiny bit of treble depending on the guitar. The amps scream that way but at manageable volumes and your really don’t need pedals at all. I think Derek Trucks sets his rig this way.  I have been using all my guitars in this amp at home with a few slight adjustments to the tone knobs depending on the guitar I’m using. When I plugged this one in it sounded like I had the tone knobs on the guitar rolled all the way off. It was so dark I had to turn the treble on the amp up to 7 to get it to sound good.

My thoughts again turned to the rosewood board so I thought I would get the opinion of a devout user of Brazilian Rosewood necks. I called Eli Lester a good friend and devout Strat user and an extreme tone freak. Eli currently has eight Two-Rock amps and several vintage beauties along with a boatload of guitars like many of us. He has very similar taste in tone as I do and we are always comparing strats to see which ones sound the best. I did not say anything about my impression of the guitar other than to say it was beautiful and it played like butter. After he drooled on it for a couple of minutes he sat down and played it unplugged and right away said, “it sounds choked”. I told him that was exactly what I thought.  Next we took it out to the music room and this time I plugged it into the Pro Reverb. He had the same impression and used the same wording I had used to describe it, "that it sounded like it had a wet blanket on it”.  

It sounds good with the proper adjustments to the amp but not great. So this is what I’m going to do. I’m taking it back to Glade and we are going to put a DeTemple titanium block on the trem unit.  Then we are going to float the bridge. I had this one set up with the bridge set against the body so we will change it to match my other strats trem setups. If that does give us what we want I’ll probably change the pickups to a brighter set.

Sorry for the long post but this is the fun part.

 

[Eric Banjitar]

Well, the covered with a wet towel comment is a downer.  I hope you can "fix" it. It will then hopefully sound even better than it looks. Keep us posted. :sad:

 

[Superlizard]

I used my Blackface Deluxe Reverb to test it.  I have found the secret to vintage Fender amps it to turn all the tone knobs to 0 and turn the volume all the way to 10 then add a little bit of bass and some times a tiny bit of treble depending on the guitar. The amps scream that way but at manageable volumes and your really don’t need pedals at all. I think Derek Trucks sets his rig this way.  I have been using all my guitars in this amp at home with a few slight adjustments to the tone knobs depending on the guitar I’m using. When I plugged this one in it sounded like I had the tone knobs on the guitar rolled all the way off. It was so dark I had to turn the treble on the amp up to 7 to get it to sound good.

FWIW, and it may or may not help - I have a very similar getup as yours.  

Running a '66-'67 Fender Deluxe non-reverb (all original) with a Warmoth strat (alder body, quartersawn all-maple neck, Callaham H/SRVs, all Callaham hardware including wire, switch, pots, caps etc)...

...and I have to turn my treble on the amp up to around 7 to get that spankin' sparkle - however I do not run my amp volume at 10.

One other item of mention:

I don't know the circuit intimately, but more than likely there's gotta be some sort of bright cap on the amp volume(s)... running
at 10 of course effectively takes out that hi-pass filter.

Perhaps the culprit is this - "Trem and saddle assembly are exact 59 repo's from the UK."

 

[mayfly]

Thank for all your very kind words.

Unfortunately this beautiful guitar does not sound as good as it looks.  My first impression when I played it unplugged was that it sounded choked or like it had a wet blanket on it. I thought since I’m so used to maple necks maybe I was hearing the difference between the Brazilian board and a maple neck so I took it out to the music room and plugged it in.

I used my Blackface Deluxe Reverb to test it.  I have found the secret to vintage Fender amps it to turn all the tone knobs to 0 and turn the volume all the way to 10 then add a little bit of bass and some times a tiny bit of treble depending on the guitar. The amps scream that way but at manageable volumes and your really don’t need pedals at all. I think Derek Trucks sets his rig this way.  I have been using all my guitars in this amp at home with a few slight adjustments to the tone knobs depending on the guitar I’m using. When I plugged this one in it sounded like I had the tone knobs on the guitar rolled all the way off. It was so dark I had to turn the treble on the amp up to 7 to get it to sound good.

My thoughts again turned to the rosewood board so I thought I would get the opinion of a devout user of Brazilian Rosewood necks. I called Eli Lester a good friend and devout Strat user and an extreme tone freak. Eli currently has eight Two-Rock amps and several vintage beauties along with a boatload of guitars like many of us. He has very similar taste in tone as I do and we are always comparing strats to see which ones sound the best. I did not say anything about my impression of the guitar other than to say it was beautiful and it played like butter. After he drooled on it for a couple of minutes he sat down and played it unplugged and right away said, “it sounds choked”. I told him that was exactly what I thought.  Next we took it out to the music room and this time I plugged it into the Pro Reverb. He had the same impression and used the same wording I had used to describe it, "that it sounded like it had a wet blanket on it”.  

It sounds good with the proper adjustments to the amp but not great. So this is what I’m going to do. I’m taking it back to Glade and we are going to put a DeTemple titanium block on the trem unit.  Then we are going to float the bridge. I had this one set up with the bridge set against the body so we will change it to match my other strats trem setups. If that does give us what we want I’ll probably change the pickups to a brighter set.

Sorry for the long post but this is the fun part.

Hmmm.  I wonder if you've got some kind of wiring issue - like a tone knob mis-wired or something.  I really don't see anything that needs such an extreme amp adjustment being a mechanical issue. 

Or maybe it is and it's time to sell it to a collector who will just look at it.

 

[Corey P.]

If he noticed the "wet blanket" phenomenon unplugged, it's not an electronic issue - the trem/trem block seems like a likely culprit/solution.  And tinkering at this stage definitely is the fun part.

 

[Tonar8352]

Hmmm.  I wonder if you've got some kind of wiring issue

This wiring harness was pulled out of another already killer sounding strat but it had 2 changes made. One we put a different cap in it and the other was we wired the bridge pickup to the middle tone pot. Before it had no tone pot on it so I may go back to that wiring and cap.

Perhaps the culprit is this - "Trem and saddle assembly are exact 59 repo's from the UK."

I have the exact same saddles on all my strats and one of his blocks in my 2-Tone strat and they all sound great but I do like my strats with the DeTemple blocks better. I just chose to use this one in this guitar because they are exact replicas of the "50's" stuff including the tooling marks. I really think replacing the block and floating the trem can fix it. The other thing is having the bridge down on the face of the guitar the string angle on the saddles is really steep and that will change dramatically when we float the block.

We will find out.

 

[ORCRiST]

Beautiful guitar Tonar.

I'm a bit surprised not to see a skunk-stripe on the neck given the total vintage vibe of the project, but whatevs.

Sorry to hear about the problems, but you're right - that's half the fun!

:kewlpics:

ORC

 

[bigguspickus]

I'm a bit surprised not to see a skunk-stripe on the neck given the total vintage vibe of the project, but whatevs.

I don't think Tonar ever used "vintage" as an adjective, like the cheaper Fenders and Squires do.

1959 was the vintage, or year, he was trying to replicate, and those with the rosewood fretboards didn't have skunk-stripes.

It's pretty accurate aside from the little pickguard notch for the truss rod.

 

[mastabassa]

i really think floating the trem will get rid of that choked sound, i had the same problem when i screwed the bridge down, floating it added a ton of jangle and chime and life to the guitar.. i really hope this works since this guitar is beautiful and im gassing hard over building something like this for me now haha

 

[Kei]

Finally this guitar was finished, mine is still in the box as I've been outstationed ever since the middle of the year due to job.
Looks great, but hope that you can find and fix the problem tonar

 

[mastabassa]

did you ever fix the problem?