Gulfcaster Guitar

[arcsine]

Being a hopeless tinkerer, I have become enamored with making guitars. Kinda helps that I am doing sound for a local band so that I have a steady stream of opinions on how they sound when I finish them.

Anyhow, here is my take on a telecaster with Gulf-Porsche inspired paint scheme.

The interesting bits for players would be:
chambered swamp ash body (what is blue is hollow, what is orange is solid)
Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates pickups with coil splitting
Warmoth maple neck with strat headstock
many coats of lacquer color and clear
custom badge for the case

The early reports are that you can have everything from a classic tele-twang to a full bodied sound of a Les Paul depending on your pickup selection and coil-spittling or not. Responds really well to effects pedals too. The guitarists in the band love it.

I am chuffed. I thought there may be some Porsche lovers here that may get a kick out of it.

[Rick V]

Sa-Weet

[Jim Richards]

That's hot!

[BlueTone]

Nice! I've thought about making a Martini Strat my next project (or maybe a Lester?)

[VaSteve]

Awesome....are you also on tdpri.com? Lots of builders over there.

[BlueSkyJaunte]

That's an awesome Tele.

Now, because I'm an ass and have to inject my own opinions....the only things I would change would be to use "real" Gulf blue and to have some sort of F-hole (how about a NACA duct??!). I love Thinlines and my personal preference has always been that chambered bodies should "show their stuff".

Even so, that's a kick ass guitar!

[arcsine]

Thanks for the kind words.

I was going to put in an f-hole but the research I did indicated the functionality of them is 'maybe' at best on chambered guitars. Hollowbodies, yes absolutely. But not bastard-son guitars like this. Also in the original design, I was going to offset the stripe and include a number circle. That pushed me to to not include the f-hole as it would have cut through the fancy stuff.

design mockup


I was severely limited in finding any lacquer colors close to what I needed without going to an auto paint store and and having some mixed up for me. And in real-life, the color is much better than the crap phone picture I have posted. This will push me to get around to taking some better shots.

[BlueSkyJaunte]

Like I said, I was just being an ass. It really is an awesome guitar and I would be thrilled to be able to play something like that. Not that I would be able to do it any justice.

My (acoustically) loudest chambered guitar is a Godin A6. Just a big flat soundboard with the standard ugly Godin switchgear on the upper bout. Even so, I 'm a big f-hole fan. I have several (too many) semi- and full hollowbodies and I just like the look of a sound hole of some kind.

I like the final version better than the mockup. Awesome job!