"Why did you do it? Why did you do this thing to me?"

[parry]

i would do them, all.

IMMEDIATELY, after seeing the pics, I thought to myself "okay.. so these are ALL Pat's guitars?!"

Figured I'd better check the entire thread to see if you'd already been here.

[s_mcsleazy]

one thing we can tell from this thread.

some people really dislike jazzmaster pickups and trems..... maybe fender were right to start doing hardtails, well based on the thoughts of people who had just taken brown acid.

[searching4XII]

Great googly moogly, I take an extended break from the 'net and the crazies all go berzerk with the saw and router simultaneously...

"Won't somebody think of the children?"

[sookwinder]

there should be a category in the "War crimes" act for these.

The EXII on page one where the dot markers go from egg shaped to a bird in flight is just shite.
But if it went from an egg to "a sunny side up with two sausages", then that would be amusing

[Grey]

[shadowplay]

To be fair some of these were at one time pretty much worthless and I'd guess that whacking buckers in one was less expensive than buying a new guitar with them. I do personally think that taking a coping saw to an old tele to render it more usable for a lefty is quite extreme BUT I also admire the desire to make the tool work at any cost. The Tele was a tool guitar and I guess hacking one a new cutaway is the ultimate in utilitarian thinking.

I remember back in the 80's before the huge boom in pre FIAT Ferrari prices, it wasn't unusual to see 2+2 Ferrari coupés (the GTE and the like not the 2 seaters) violated with American iron, because fixing the thoroughbred unit was beyond the owners means. I went to see a 68 Rolls Royce MPW coupe quite recently that had the indignity of having a caveman's small block shoved up it's chuff but thankfully an original engine is easily found. Less extreme would be the thousands and thousands of cars that are regarded as real classic cars (not just anything oldish) that have had their dash, door panels and parcel shelves cut for speakers and a DIN unit. Back then folk just wanted to hear their tapes in and didn't have any real notion of preserving originality. These days there are gurus who'll wire a hidden head unit to your old radio (and faux olde radios with hidden screen and all that jazz) but back then it was either AM and original or cut for DIN and go cassette or later CD.

I'd also say that things like hammering a Bigsby square peg into the Fender round hole may have been predicated by the original trem breaking and the hammerer having no idea how to fix it.

D

[scottT]

^^^
This is true. I can't help but think of the extreme example of the door that was cut into the Last Supper. Hey, they needed a bigger door. Sometimes expedience trumps everything. We may cringe now,--even about mass produced objects like cars and guitars--but these things just weren't held in the same regard as they are now. Then of course there's just plain ol' ignorance. I have a hunch this sort of thing reached it's peak in the '70s. I have a book called "Customize Your Electric Guitar (1981) that I think of as the culmination of the modification ideas of the previous decade...routing for humbuckers, drilling for multiple coil tap/boost switches, carving out a battery cavity for active circuitry etc...oh and of course the brass nut for extra sustain. Sometimes I'm surprised so many relatively untouched guitars survived the ravages of that age.

Also I wanted to say that John Nuese who (allegedly) made the Bloomfield Tele into a lefty was in a band called the International Submarine Band (not the Flying Burrito Brothers)...though they both had Gram Parsons in common. He is credited with helping to invent Country Rock. There is a joke in here somewhere about whether that, or what he did to the guitar was the greater crime.

O.K. back to the horror show....

This was once a blackguard (50-54) Telecaster:

[hornz]

Oops, double-post.

[hornz]

Have you guys seen this '52?





On sale at Rumbleseat at the moment

Hang on, Fender are now producing this (sort of!), showcased at NAMM 2015:

[Mad-Mike]

I quite like this one, I love Jaguars and I like blade Humbuckers...especially if those are anything like what Alex Lifeson had in his Hentor Sportscasters. Ah yes, RUSH on a Jaguar.

[Fenderguy]

Hang on, Fender are now producing this (sort of!), showcased at NAMM 2015:

Damn, that`s ugly as hell imo!

[hella1hella]

`59 burst

Take off all of the other nonsense and I think the body shape is actually pretty cool!

[shadowplay]

^^^
This is true. I can't help but think of the extreme example of the door that was cut into the Last Supper. Hey, they needed a bigger door. Sometimes expedience trumps everything. We may cringe now,--even about mass produced objects like cars and guitars--but these things just weren't held in the same regard as they are now. Then of course there's just plain ol' ignorance. I have a hunch this sort of thing reached it's peak in the '70s. I have a book called "Customize Your Electric Guitar (1981) that I think of as the culmination of the modification ideas of the previous decade...routing for humbuckers, drilling for multiple coil tap/boost switches, carving out a battery cavity for active circuitry etc...oh and of course the brass nut for extra sustain. Sometimes I'm surprised so many relatively untouched guitars survived the ravages of that age.

Yeah I had a book that was similar at one point, to be honest if I had a Jazzmaster and skills/money in 1982, zhivago would probably be posting a picture of one with an embedded flanger and DR-55. I think sometimes it's hard for people to see how unsentimental the 70's and 80's were and it wasn't always a terrible thing, I think it fostered both sacred and fully heathen ideas, because sometimes I feel we are a little too reverential about the past and while all these Fenders had a chance of being great guitars, a worrying amount of old garbage is being stickered up as 'vintage' when it's just old and second hand (nothing wrong with that, it's a nice honest term).

It's quite funny, the crossroads that our house is on has four large houses on it and during the 70's and 80's only one house was still actually a private residence, the rest were care homes (ours) or government facilities (the really big house). These days they are loved, protected and preserved but back then they were just seen as expensive to heat and old. Ours had all the oak panelling covered by another layer of drywall, the floors covered by hardboard, a crappy brick extension cobbled on it and a stained glass window and a glass stairwell dome boarded over the same way, luckily they just covered it and didn't rip it out which was the norm. Our house isn't truly architecturally important in isolation (and I don't think it is at all beyond being a nice house) but I lived across the road from the Alexander 'Greek' Thomson designed Holmwood Houseas a child and it was owned by nuns (and some of it was a school) who covered the lot in drywall, generally messed the place up but no one cared and in the general area several really grand old houses (that once stood in lavish grounds and gardens) were demolished in the 70's and no one really cared until recently and...by then they were dust.

D

[s_mcsleazy]

http://www.guitarfail.com/butchered-66-jazzmaster/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Pacafeliz]

http://www.guitarfail.com/butchered-66-jazzmaster/

well fuck.