I'm Beto Richieri, 35, and I live in Brazil. I play rock in a band called Luxuria (Lust). We've just finished recording our first CD, and
our videoclip is already on MTV Brasil.Well, I'd like to submit my Telecaster...it's an Fender American Standard Telecaster, 3-tone sunburst, 2000, maple neck. I
bought it used, stock, and I thought I needed it to be a little bit 'hot-rodded' to suit my needs (I've never had another Tele before). First of all, I didn't like the stock neck pickup. I first
bought another pickguard (pearloid), so I could enlarge the hole to fit a Texas Special Strato pickup. Worked nice, but I wanted more ;)
I tried to invert the control plate, so the volume knob would be closer to my picking hand.. but to do that I'd had to route the body. Hmmm...I don't think that would be a good idea!
So I did all I could, remembering that it's only modifications I could revert (if I ever decide to sell it, I'd like it to be stock again).
- I've replaced the stock hardware (bridge/control plate). Bought a new 'Hot Rod" set at Musician's friend;
- replaced the two pickups for Seymour's Hot Lead Stack (bridge) and Little59 (neck);
- replaced the original 250k volume pot for a CTS 500K;
- I bought a cover of black vinyl adhesive to make the pickguard black;
- replaced the stock 3-position switch for a 5-position Super Switch, and I've made up a very nice wiring with that:
pos.1: bridge pickup
pos.2: bridge p-up in
series with split Little59
pos.3: bridge p-up in parallel with split Little 59
pos.4: split Little59
pos.5: Little59, standard humbucker.
So I have a lot of combinations without any
additional switches. And in pos.1, 3 and 5, it's almost a regular fat Tele.
That's it.. I now call it my Hellecaster.
Oh, by the way, in our videoclip, I'm playing this Tele... it rocks!
I'm Beto Richieri, 35, and I live in Brazil. I play rock in a band called Luxuria (Lust). We've just finished recording our first CD, and
our videoclip is already on MTV Brasil.