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).

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.

Albers Guitars #1-5

So here we go, in (reverse) chronological order...

#5 Black Limba Tele#1 (Nov-Dec 2010)

In my quest for awesome tone, I came across a wood called Korina. It was a glorious wood, of golden luster, favored by the late 50s Gibson Flying V's, Explorers and Moderne's. The associated name for Korina was limba. I thought this was the same exact thing. It's close, but not exactly the same. Black Limba (Black Korina) could be riddled with wormholes, spalt lines, and non matching grain. What I found later was that I liked Black Limba more than a plain grey-ish tan white limba that Gibson used. Black limba had browns, blacks, purples, oranges, and the core grey-tan color. The grain varied so much that over the course of my builds, I had to rebuild my Black Korina Tele in favor for a more interesting grain pattern.

My first black limba tele again suffered from the fate of tear out, but this time inside the bottom horn. With three tear out in a row, and a growing lumber supply, I was ready to hang it all up. I corrected this build by pulling the cutaway back and giving the horn the super-Strat cutaway access. It appears as if I was still using a heavy round over for the Tele's.

It took me a bit to research what happened to this body as I knew this one sold locally. I think it originally was intended for a Russian bidder, but he wanted a different pickup configuration and I guess opted to not buy it. But I do recall selling it to a guy in Del Mar named Kevin (Ebay buyer, kmoraine).










#2-4. The trifecta (Apr 2010)

I bought one board of northern ash that made three bodies. I messed up on all three as this was my own build - no training wheels with cabinet makers looking over my shoulder. All three were built at the same time but really the Jazzmaster was sold unfinished first, then the Vellacaster was presented second, although delivered after the Vickcaster was presented.



The Jazzmaster
I screwed up on the roundover on the heel. Yep, it's not supposed to be that round there. Plus no belly cut, no pickup routes, no forearm relief. Man I sucked. And it was heavy so I was happy to offload it to an Ebay buyer. It sold in October 2010 to Antony Renverseau in France for a whopping $41 + shipping. Antony, I hope you finished off well!

The Tele's (Vickcaster [L]; un-routed Vellacaster [R])



Vick-caster (aka the 001) (Apr-Oct 2010).
As mentioned in my earlier blog, this was for my drummer Jason Vick who I played with in Divided By Zero (Ghoulspoon) and Brodeeva. On this tele I rounded the upper horn, only to shatter the strap pin area with tear out. I moved the template back and reshaped the upper horn. Body is routed for one tele pickup and control plate. Pickup is a Duncan Hot Rails and wired with three way toggle for coil tap and phase, with volume and tone. Neck is Mighty Might and hardware is Grover tuners and an unknown bridge.









Vellacaster (aka the 002) (Apr-Nov 2010)

As mentioned in my earlier blog, this was for my buddy Mike Vella. He was a fan of good guitars and rocking tones, and often dragged me out to concerts to see good bands like Wolfmother and Mike Ness. He was also my beer connoisseur buddy so I thought I'd return the favor with this gem. Mike's tele didn't suffer as bad of a fate as Jason's Esquire, but a sliver of wood was ripped off from the forearm area before the round over was added. The piece was glued back, sanded , and rounded over. Now it's hardly noticeable.

In this photo you can see it in the background being glued up.


At the end of the day, after being lacquered and dialed in, it came out to be an awesome Tele. Pickup is a Duncan 59 Tele wired for coil tap and a Duncan Designed humcancelling P90, with three way toggle, volume, and tone. Neck is Mighty Might and hardware is Fender (tuners and bridge).








Photo Courtesy of Mike Vella

#1. CCG Esquire(2006-2008?)

My number One. I never play it. It sits in a case under the bed. But it's my first, my last my everything. I'm kidding Barry White. This was the first Tele I built with Evan Smith and Phil Ebner at the CCG workshop. Crotch maple top with cocobolo and purple heart center top, over a thin walnut pinstripe veneer and alder core, backed by figured maple. Depending on how you look at the back figure, it can either look like a goat, or Homer Simpson. Neck is Mighty Might Strat neck - figured maple and rosewood; pickup is a Seymour Duncan P-Rails wired with Volume, Tone, 3-way toggle (Hum, Rail, P90); hardware is Wilkinson bridge (chopped) and Sperzel locking tuners with a Indian Rosewood control plate and Cocobolo knobs.



Stay tuned for Albers Guitars #6-10...