Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4  Hi, Eric Bergman here. I've been playing guitar since about 1965 (find out more here:
www.maxmulti.com), and I bought my first Tele in 1971. Within weeks of
owning it, I had removed the neck pickup, grabbed a chisel (!), and proceeded to carve out a not-particularly-subtle hole for a Gibson Humbucker (thankfully hidden by the pickguard!...see page
4). Thus began my love affair with the addictive art of Tele modification! Since then, I have modified a number of Teles for
myself and others, and still find the process exciting, fascinating and quite rewarding, which is why I created the TeleModders site and forum.
Since my own profile on this site hasn't been updated in about five years or so, I thought it might be time to take care of that, so what follows is a sampling of my mods over the years, spread
over four pages.
April, 2008:
The "Adeson" Tele
First up is one of my favorite Tele mods ever. Using the sunburst body (a 25-or-so-year-old Chandler '62 RI) and neck (a '78 Tele
neck I bought new) from the Tele you see at the top of this page in the TeleModders banner as the basis, I decided that I wanted to finally build a guitar I had dreamed about for quite a while: a
Tele-version of Brian May's "Red Special", with three Burns Tri-sonic pickups, and somehow, keep the 6-switch series/phase wiring he employed. I redesigned a standard Tele guard and had
it cut by Roger at Jeannie Pickguards. I cut down the base plate
of the Fender Bigsby unit to butt up against the guard, and used a custom bridge with 6 brass saddles (designed by me and the absurdly-talented Mark Johnston, and crafted by him). The pickups are
Adeson "Classic British" pickups , universally considered to be the best, most accurate Tri-sonic reissues
made. I designed a staggered mini-switch layout which I installed on a blank control plate from GuitarFetish
. The switch tips are special covers with black rubber boots on them. All in all, a remarkable sounding instrument! 
April, 2008:
The "Adeson" Strat
After I finished the "Adeson" Tele, I set to work on building it's
sibling, the "Red Special" Strat. I bought a great ash Fender Strat body in transparent crimson, as close as I could come to
the color of Brian May's "Old Lady", and found a matching Fender neck with a great 12" radius. The Strat has the same set up as
the Tele...same wiring, switches, etc. The added wrinkle is the bridge...it's an LR Baggs X-bridge with it's companion Ctrl-X preamp. So, the guitar has three Adeson Classic British pickups
plus acoustic bridge pickups, and a switch to use one or the other, or both. The volume knob (again, a visual nod to Brian's knobs) closest to the bridge is a blend knob (there's also a small
inset black stereo/mono switch button there, too), then the volume and tone knobs. I also routed out a cavity on the back for a plastic 9-volt holder for the preamp (see photo inset). As
you can imagine, it was pretty interesting fitting all the wiring into the control cavity!
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