 I'm 48, live in San Antonio and have been playing off and on since '66 or so. Most of my playing out days were in the late '60s to late
'70s. I primarily play for my own amusement/ embarrassment now, but do get out and play a few gigs a year. I'm down to one Tele now, my Mongrel '67, but here's the story of the
"Freddie", the goldtop guitar...A wonderful gentleman and great guitar builder on the TDP, Rob DiStefano, builds guitars for himself and then sends them out into the world for others to dig.
The Freddie started out as Warmoth body and neck. The neck Rob used was more Gibson-like with wide flat fretboard and gentle radius
profile on the back. He also used the thicker Gibson type frets. The pickups were Kent Armstrong P100s, if I remember right. The bridge is a Schaller stop (it's a wonderful tight stop-type
bridge. Intonation is dead-on and it's comfortable for resting and muting.) The knobs, tuners and switch were from Angela Instruments. A fellow TDP-er beat me to
the punch and got first grabs on this guitar when Rob put it up for sale ($300.) Fortunately for me, the buyer didn't quite cotton to it and sold it to me for the
same price. The P100s weren't what I was hearing, so I sold them and got some Rio Grande P90s from Jenkins Cabinet Shop. The neck also wasn't quite my style so I sold it and got a
Warmoth Fatback profile maple/rosewood. Just to keep things linear, I wussed and couldn't deal with the Fatback (which is fatter than the necks on the MIM '50s Teles which I'd liked and
was hoping to get close to.) So, I sold the Warmoth Fatback and called Tommy at USACG. After giving him some sort of dimensions from the neck of my '67 Tele, he made me an almost
fully faithful recreation, but with rosewood and a skunkstripe. This is the neck the guitar ended up with.
 I got hold of the guy that Kenny Blue Ray uses to do his refinishing work. Kenny said the guys does good gold, so I shipped it off and
Kenny was right! Quick turnaround, too, and not all that expensive. I guess with all the back and forth, buying and selling I had about another $300 in the
guitar. Circumstances happened a few months ago and I ended up selling it to my best friend in Austin. He put a maple neck on it. I truely hated to see it leave but I do get to play it
occasionally (New Year's Eve was the last time) and it's got a good home and still in the family.
Rob deserves the credit for the design, I just accessorized it a
bit. You can see more of Freddie
here.
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