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Nathan Noel's Mary Kaye Tele

Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2012 11:30 am
by Nathan Noel
After a round of Tele styled guitars for comissioners I decided that I'd take some of the leftovers and build a Tele style guitar for myself since I don't have a straight up tele of my own.

Specs.
Body: Swamp Ash
Finish: Mary Kaye White (Target EM6000 Waterbourne Lacquer)
Neck: Wenge
Fingerboard: Wenge
Fretwire: StewMac #149
Inlay: Mother of pearl face and side dots and mother of pearl Logo
Bridge: Joe Barden Vintage Tele
Tuning Machines: Sperzel Locking
Pickups: Dimarzio Area-T (DP418 - Bridge, DP417 Neck)
Pickguard: Tortoise
Jack: Electrosocket


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Re: Nathan Noel's Mary Kaye Tele

Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2012 12:50 pm
by Jason Rodgers
That dark wenge neck is very striking on the white body! Nice, clean, tele look. And I like that headstock, too. Did you distress the edges to cut through the paint, or have you really been playing it that hard?!

Re: Nathan Noel's Mary Kaye Tele

Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2012 12:54 pm
by Jim Bonnell
Nice job. I love the neck too. Gotta love that wenge.

Re: Nathan Noel's Mary Kaye Tele

Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2012 3:13 pm
by Mark Swanson
I love a good telecaster and that's my guitar of choice. this looks great! but I gotta have a 6-way bridge, I just don't like the 3-way ones very much...but they do look vintage!

Re: Nathan Noel's Mary Kaye Tele

Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2012 4:00 pm
by Nathan Noel
Mark Swanson wrote:I love a good telecaster and that's my guitar of choice. this looks great! but I gotta have a 6-way bridge, I just don't like the 3-way ones very much...but they do look vintage!
Have you tried the Joe Barden bridge? The saddles are drilled and machined at funky angles and it into mates spot on. Feels good too I'm not a fan of ash tray bridges but with the treble side of the bridge plate cut away... It works well. Had I not installed this bridge on a guitar for another guy and really liked it I would have never considered it.

And yes Jason I distressed the body... Quite by accident too. I was installing the string ferrules and the brittle ass waterborne finish chipped. So I says screw it and lightly distressed the finish. It's for me.. So no biggie. I like the look.

Also here's a better shot of the headstock... You don't see a lot of non-tilt headstocks get inlaid, so I'm always proud of my inlay work. But please ignore the "first setup" strings... They've been off and on a couple of times. :geek:
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Re: Nathan Noel's Mary Kaye Tele

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2012 11:34 pm
by Chuck Tweedy
Cool, but I expected pink from the name.
Hope you don't pick up any splinters from that neck. Looks like the pores are pretty open and ready to calve off some doozies.
:-)

Re: Nathan Noel's Mary Kaye Tele

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 10:00 pm
by Mike Dotson
Very nice all around. The color is very classy with the dark neck and tort pickguard.

I've really become a fan of wenge (aka, African Splinter Wood ;) ) for fretboards and necks. Even have one 1/2 done with a 3-piece wenge cap.

Re: Nathan Noel's Mary Kaye Tele

Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 8:49 am
by Nathan Noel
Yeah, this neck feels amazing... I brought it to my last gig to try on a few songs. I ended up playing it on probably 38 out of 45 songs for the night. I have to say... I did a damn fine job on this one. :D