, I got it assembled just in time
for the gig last Saturday at The Whole Enchilada in Moss Landing, CA.I bought this body from Ed on Ebay, assembled it with other odds-and-ends I've had for too long, laminated some
fabric on the front, and presto: a (pseudo) Tele for low dough! I say pseudo because of the humbuckers and one-piece, wrap-around bridge. At least the bridge pickup is tapped for a
single-coil sound, operated by a two-position rotary switch in the tone-pot location. The lightweight ash body is really nice and resonant.
The fabric lamination works out better
than I thought, and is a real conversation-opener at clubs. I'm probably going to do a combo amp next.
Mini profile?, I'll try: I've been playing somewhere for dough at
least a few times per week since the early '70s, currently playing in the Monterey/Cannery Row area. And, for all the great overdriven guitar sounds foisted off on us by Clapton in
1966 (and later, others ad infinitum), I've always been most inspired by the 'clang' of single coils: Let's Go by the Routers; Drift Away by Dobie Gray; Jerry Donahue, etc., etc.
I decided to get a 'real job'
by Guitar Bob of Kelley and the Beachcombers, and Cheeky Spanks (in Monterey):
I worked assembling amps at Fender in '72 and '73, so I thought I'd repeat some bits I had shared with Greg Gagliano and which
can also be found in his excellent "Dating Fender Amps" series of articles.
I was playing around LA with bands The Baxters and Oliver Walrus
when the other guitarist and I decided to get real jobs. Living on the pay from sporadic gigs at beach clubs and beer bars wasn't quite cutting it. We ended up applying around
Orange County and I finally got a call back on one of my applications.
CBS Musical Instruments put me to work in their amplifier section. There were 5 or 6 guys building chassis then. The
foreman came around to tell us what we'd be building on a particular day. We just went to a big bin every morning and loaded up our wheeled rack with a batch of whatever chassis
we were to be working on. Likwewise we'd load up pots, transformers, etc. that we'd just dig out of boxes. Super Reverbs, Bassman, Twins, whatever; maybe we'd assemble 30
per man, per day. I think the better, older hands did more. It wasn't always 'cool' guitar amps; sometimes I was putting together Fender Rhodes Satellite amps on bent aluminum, other
times Champs.
Our boss was a thirty-something guy--real nice. The rest of us assemblers were twenty-something except for the occasional
lifer. I was trying to hold down this job while sometimes gigging way up in Hollywood until 2:00 AM; I was always tired. I remember one week two "suits" from upstairs standing behind us
doing time studies. They actually held clipboards and stopwatches to measure how long it took to attach various parts.
When I walked through the plant mornings and afternoons I
would pass bins of 'blem' guitar necks slated for destruction at the bandsaw. I agonized over it: "Can't I just take 'em home?" As it was, I ended up importing a few handfuls of pots,
switches, and jacks home in my lunchpail for fixing up amps over the decades.
Around Christmas, they had an employee sale to clear out
inventory. I showed up hoping for Teles and Strats. Instead it was Dimension IVs, Tel-Ray can-style echoes, import Fender acoustics with rattles and dings, and other flotsam...all for
$5.00 each. I left with armloads of 'gifts'.
I remember the circuit boards were premade, from Mexico, easy to screw into the chassis. Same with the little rectifier boards.
When we had filled our cart with assembled chassis we'd wheel it over to the Chicano ladies for wiring. They were something to behold, all chatting away while soldering so quickly, it didn't
seem like they were hardly looking. After that the foreman would add the tubes, turn 'em on, and set the bias, I guess! What did I know from bias back then; I just played 'em until
they needed work. I recently read that some of the pickup winders still work for Fender.
Sometimes I wish I'd stayed there longer to learn more, but I
just wanted to tour and play music (which I did the rest of the decade). Who'd have known that this whole RocknRoll/Fender trip would just keep getting bigger and bigger?
...from a body made by