Friday, October 18, 2013

Teisco restored! (Visually, at least.)

Some of you guys might remember this:


I bought it for $75 plus the new pickguard, not even sure what it was. I posted about it a while back.

Here's what it looks like now:


Pretty sweet!

I did find out that it is a Kawai-era Teisco. I saw two of them on Ebay since buying mine, both about $400 each. Of course, they were in working condition, which mine still is not. It's a piece of wall art right now - I've restored its looks, but goddamn if I can figure out how to do that four switch, four pickup wiring. Two of the old switches and one of the original pickups were totally smashed and already pulled apart when I got it, so I've got nothing to go on and I am no electrical engineer. Without a schematic, forget it.

The neck also seems pretty hopelessly backbowed. I tried turning the truss rod and only succeeded in bending my allen wrenches. So you can play this thing acoustically right now, if your goal is to sound like a swarm of killer bees. It's actually pretty funny.

The repro Teisco badge may be overkill and this guitar might not have had one originally (the two on Ebay didn't, although they do tend to fall off), but I found a two pickup version of this exact guitar in an old JC Penney catalog that did, and anyway I like it. The headstock is too empty and too big for the guitar without it.

Now to find a wiring diagram...

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About This Blog

This is increasingly not a blog about Alphabet City, New York. I used to live in the East Village and work on Avenue B, but I no longer do. Why don't I change the name if I'm writing about Japan and video games and guitars? Because New Yorkers are well-rounded people with varied interests, and mine have gone increasingly off the rails over the years. And I don't feel like changing the name. I do still write about New York City sometimes.

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