Albers Guitars #6-10

So after five bodies, each having an error with it, I pulled myself up from the bootstraps. and kept going. And by kept going, I mean kept having errors...I guess the moral of the story is that you'll never learn to NOT do the mistakes without having made them first. Fortunately for me all my mistakes were "fixable" and I was able to recoup from the errors. Each of these bodies were built with a strat heel as finding tele necks online was more difficult than finding the equivalent Strat neck, and usually the strat necks were cheaper. I justified this thinking based on that idea that everyone was a broke musician like me. Little did I know (or think) that a tele heel accepts Strat heels and therefore is the more versatile of the two cuts.

#10 Black Korina Tele #3 (Dec 2010)

So in my continued attempt to build the perfect Korina Tele, I had constructed this beauty. But my tastes were changing. Perfect, blemish free wood began to bore me. My first tele (CCG esquire) was a cacophony of woods, and the two center pieces of the body (the figured maples) were not perfect. The top was crotch maple, with the grain radiating out in every direction in relation to the center line and the back was an oddity that showed various images depending how you looked at it. So after building this body to completion, I found I wasn't satisfied with the fact that the most interesting part of the wood (the spalt) was on the back of the body. So the quest continued and the guitar was dissembled so I could sell this body and build another body with more interesting grain patterns.

This one sold in June 2011 to Larry Moore in Lowellville, Ohio.











#9 Black Korina Tele #2 (Dec 2010)

Again still attempting to build the perfect Korina Tele, I bought enough wood to replace the original korina Tele and create two new korina teles to choose from. Black Korina Tele#2 was made specifically to sell and recoup the expensive of the wood. Or in my terms "one for you, and one for me - aka I get one for free". Each of the teles had a similar blemish-free top, and black spalting on the back. The spalting on the back of this body had a worm cavity that needed to be filled, so I opted to sell this one. It was also sold un-rounded for binding or the buyer's rounding.

This one sold in Jan 2011 to Damon Bishop in Springfield, Virgina.





#8 Makore Tele #1 (Dec 2010)

After my experience with limba, I ventured out to other exotic woods in hopes of finding an awesome wood that shamed all the flamed and quilted maple veneered guitars out there. In addition to zebrawood, wenge, lacewood, and picking up more limba, I found Makore, which is an African Cherry. One of the things I learned was that dust masks and proper ventilation was not optional if you didn't like inhaling wood dust. I also learned of wood toxicity and how some dust will hurt you more than others. Some wood like makore...

After building the guitar and swearing not to ever use it again due to my lung issues, I sold the guitar "shaped", but not "routed". Fortunately someone (Ebay buyer masterzplinter) who wanted to install a Ghost piezo system found use in an un-cut extremely heavy tele body.

The remainder of the makore board this body was cut from had been turned into a work surface. I expected to never build another makore body again, but recently I purchased a 4/4 makore board in order to make a bookmatch top for turning that body blank into a thinline. Dust masks will be used when that body is built.

It sold in Feb 2011 to Victor Sumin in Fairfax, Virginia.





#7 Alder Redwood Thinline Tele (Feb-Jul 2011)

Birthed at the same time as the trifecta...it also suffered a major mistake. I had big plans to build a deep body thinline, with a depth close to the 2" mark, and planned on topping this. Off the shelves the alder was 8/4 or 1.75" so adding a 0.25" top would bring me to that thickness. What I didn't plan on was being a space cadet and creating a roundover prior to adding the top. Because I was still using a heavy roundover radius, the top of body needed to be ground off to create a "square" edge for a top to be added.



I settled on redwood as I had heard about it being used as a figured top and had won a few figured redwood tops for super cheap in ebay auctions. It quickly because apparent that redwood dinged easy so I fought with the body long and hard to undo dings by steaming out the wood and resanding it. But after all that I realized the top had shifted over the alder on glue up so the center lines were correct at the heel but at the butt of the guitar it was off by a 1/16th". When it comes down to it centerlines are used for alignment, and the top was aligned right for the bridges and neck placement, so this issue was aesthetics. I thought a dye would hide the alder seam, but it didn't so it sat for months until I decided to finish it in nitro and sell it.

It sold in Jan 2012 to Alexey Efremov in Russia.





#6 Maple and Mahogany Thinline Tele #1 (Nov-Dec 2010)

This was my first attempt at a thinline and working with maple and mahogany. Overall I felt it came out good, but it also suffered a tear-out on the horn. I glued it back into place and with the roundover and some sanding it was hardly noticeable. I believe on this body I had also created multiple drill point for various bridges.

Sold to Clinton Morris in Hopatcong, New Jersey in Dec 2010.