Albers Guitars #11-20

The bodies that followed into the double digits started to lose consistency of the numbering. I often began projects and then let them sit, changing my focus to another project that I started and completed, and in most cases sold. The number therefore is based on when I started the project. Some of the later projects I built I started a few at the same time, so those were arbitrarily put in order.

#20 Black Ash "Nolan" Telecaster

During the build of the 52 Tele, my former drummer for Brodeeva, Jason Vick, had expressed interest in having a guitar built for his nephew for his birthday which was 2 months away. I had the spare body so I agreed and a parts/cost list was created. As the body was already shaped, I began the initial body preparation for the guitar -- a transparent black with red pickguard and black hardware.

Jason ended up leaving Brodeeva shortly thereafter and word on what to do with the body never got answered. The month of his nephew's birthday passed and no other items were purchased by Jason for the project. At that point I assumed the idea wasn't going to fruition and I decided to offload the project to a prospective buyer. The body sold in September 2011 to ebay buyer flight2pvg in Carson, California. There was no name attached to the purchase, only a business, so I am unsure who owns this guitar now.








#19 Butterscotch 52 Ash Telecaster #1
As my first two ash teles went downhill during build, I thought I would try again so that I could create the butterscotch blonde 52 Tele that I always wanted. As always I bought enough wood for two builds - one to keep, one to sell, so this project wasn't thwarted when #20 came around.

I specifically chose and planned the ash for this build, basing the grain pattern around a circular pattern that would be in the forearm area. One of the issues I found was that this board, while beautiful there, had worm holes riddling the back. As I was trying to do a butterscotch blonde, I figured some epoxy would fix the issue.







I purchased the Butterscotch blonde finish from ReRanch (along with the Mary Kaye white) and began spraying the finish on. I was sad to see that the butterscotch was more butter-ish and a bright mustard-y yellow than transparent butterscotch. As this didn't suit me, I sanded down the finish and prepped for an alternate finish. In doing so the worm wood holes widened so I had to re-epoxy them for the next finish.



I had read that Shellac was the preference of some builders. So on my next trip to Home Depot I bought a few rattle cans of the Tinted Zinsser rattlecan shellac thinking it was the same. I soon found that it didn't ever harden and sprayed on horribly (likely because I sucked at finishing).



I finally succumbed to making my own dye using the Transdint dyes. The Honey Amber turned out too yellowish again so I had to darken it with some brown. After multiple coats I finally reached a color I thought was acceptable.



During the whole build and painting/dying process I started to learn better techniques and my accuracy was getting better. I eventually got my hands on some one-piece Swamp ash and decided to sell this body as it weighed in close to 6lbs by itself so that I could rebuild it with the swamp ash. I sold this body off in Dec 2011 to Greg Henderson in Woodstock, Georgia.



#18 Honduras "Genuine" Mahogany Strat

After scoring an awesome and light piece of Honduran Mahogany, and with the paint fiasco of the Mary Kaye, I decided to build me a basic Mahogany Strat. Pretty straight forward Strat, except that I put a humbucker in the bridge position in case I needed to use it for rock purposes. Currently it is residing in Brodeeva's drummer's (Twon) Cabana Studios in case a guitar is needed for recording.

Guitar is matched with a maple/maple All parts 70's Strat neck, Duncan Classic Stack single coils, and a Duncan JB in the bridge. Tremolo is Fender made, and Sperzels keep the guitar in tune.





#17 Mary Kaye not-so-white (Mar-Apr 2011)

This was my sad attempt at lacquering and coloring a body. I really wanted a Mary Kaye white over ash guitar and built an awesome ash body for it. When I started painting it, the white made the ash pinkish and in trying to get the color consistent, I ended up turning it into a solid color reminiscent of Olympic White.

It was my first Strat body and I was quite impressed with the outcome of the shaping. I compared the shaping to my sunburst Strat (Allparts body) and a Candy Apple Red MIM Fender Strat. Northern ash was quite heavy and after turning the body a solid white I opted to sell the body and restart the project another day. Body sold in June 2011 to David Fazio in Lawrence, Massachusetts.









#14 Wenge Thinline, #15 Leopardwood Thinline and #16 Zebrawood Thinline Telecasters



As I accumulated lumber I picked a few species that looked good, especially on paper. They unfortunately did not look good on a scale, with the solid wenge body pushing the 10lbs mark, the lacewood in the 9-10lb range and the zebrawood in the 8-9lb range. And that was their weigh before a neck or hardware was added. :\

So in lieu of breaking my back, I decided to make all three thinlines, as to relive some of their massive weight. The wenge was the first built and I found that wenge splinters like crazy and the dust has a seductive smell to it that leaves you coughing your lungs out.

#16 Zebrawood Thinline (Feb 2011-?)
Third is the Zebrawood body. I have yet to even route the chambering and it also sits in the same to-do pile as the Lacewood body. According to luthier groups, zebrawood has tonal properties similar to maple.



#15 Leopardwood Thinline (Feb 2011-?)
Next up was the Lacewood body. I made it this far and left the pickup routes out as I was unsure what arrangement I wanted. It currently resides in a to-do pile in my room, although I have since cut the dual humbucker and pickup cavity routes. According to luthier groups, lacewood has tonal properties similar to mahogany.



#14 Wenge Thinline Telecaster (Feb-July 2011)

For the wenge body I wanted to try building a double F-hole body with no control panel - in homage to my Epiphone Casino that I had started to enjoy. All the controls were inserted in the F-holes and pulled back to position.

The completed guitar has single wire Duncan 59 pickups, 3 way toggle and volume and tone. It has a nice midrangey tone to it and cuts thru the mix. The neck is also wenge with an ebony fingerboard. I purchased the Strat neck from Fender licensed company Jamerson Guitars (Musikraft). This guitar is in my private collection, and considering the cost of the neck, and work required to build, it likely will not be sold.







#13 Rene Ugarte's Zebracaster (Feb-May 2011)

This was my first paying build. My brother in law was supportive of my new hobby and contracted me to build him a custom Telecaster. He had been trying to hone in on his sound and wasn't liking the tremolo on his PRS guitar and asked me to build something similar that allowed him to have a floating tremolo bridge, blade style switch that allowed coil tapping, and most importantly a comfortable neck with a compound radius.

The neck was made by Warmoth and is mahogany with their compound 10" to 16" radius ebony fingerboard and jumbo frets. Rene liked the look of zebrawood and since it had a tone like maple it would give a similar tone of his PRS.

The hardware is all black and has Schaller locking tuners, Wilkinson VS100 tremolo, the Duncan JB/Jazz set wired with a Megaswitch P-model. As a final arrangement of the electronics, we re-orientated the control plate so that the switch is closest to the neck, and the knob towards the back of the guitar is the volume as it was more accessible when the tremolo bar floated over the center knob. This was the first tremolo equipped guitar I made.  In recent events Rene decided to swap out pickups. Final pickup combo yet to be determined but he's leaning towards the Duncan Jazz and IM1, which is a four wire version of the Eddie Van Halen "Frankenstein" pickup.









#12 Walnut Thinline Telecaster (Feb-June 2011)

Its a bit nutty. I built this one just to test my skills with routing P90s. I had recently replaced the P90s in a Epiphone Casino hollowbody with Duncan Hum cancelling P90s and I like the sound it gave. I thought that a tele thinline with P90s would be nice. I bookmatched this top and I like the coloration difference in the center, so instead of building it to sell, I kept this one. This one is one of my favorites. Lightly figured walnut over Honduras mahogany with stacked Duncan P90s wired for coil tap (turn into a true P90) on both Volume and Tone knobs for the neck and bridge respectively. Mighty Might Rosewood/birdseye maple Strat neck. Fender hardtail bridge with Sperzel locking tuners.





#11 Rick's Northern Ash and Redwood Telecaster (Dec 2010-Mar 2011)

Built for my Brodeeva band member, bassist/guitarist Rick Blair. Between him and I we handle both guitar and bass parts for Brodeeva and combined we are Rick James. Betch. ;)

I started building another ash body after not being able to build a error-less one after Jason and Mike's teles. But I SNAFU'd as usual. This time placing the neck pocket too far back and requiring me to re add wood to the pocket to make up for it. The fix was fine, but the look was unsightly and was noticeable even with a 22nd fret fingerboard. I chose to shave off the top and add a top to it. One of my redwood book matched tops was a three -piece so i used two of the book matches to build this one. The remaining redwood was used on another build much later.

Rick started getting interested in my guitar builds and asked me to build him one. Rick had a vintage birdseye Mighty Might neck that had yellowed in time that was attached to a sad 80's POS guitar. I showed him this body and he liked it, and since I had been giving away my mess ups to friends, this was a ideal guitar for him to use the neck and build a guitar for cheap. Once I topped the body the guitar looked great and the error was near invisible.

Rick ended up getting a chrome control plate with white Les Paul style knobs instead of the figured maple one shown in the last photo. He also found standard single coils to install into it (Fender American Std bridge and GFS Tele neck) instead of the rail pickup shown. We finished this project in the summer of 2011 (June-ish).