Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Discussion of newer designs, copies and reissue offset-waist instruments.
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Larry Mal
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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by Larry Mal » Mon Jul 26, 2021 6:38 pm

smjenkins wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 6:30 pm


Are there small builder Telemasters that predate this?
I don't know if other builders were making them, but a lot of people were making them.

If I remember right, Warmoth and maybe some other builders had been doing the Telemaster for some time, they call it the Jazzcaster:

https://warmoth.com/guitar-bodies/jazzcaster

I'm virtually certain they had been doing that for a few years before Fender caught on and responded with the official Telemaster.

But, I didn't build one, so I could be wrong about that. That's what I remember, though, and the reason I do is because some people that had been making them still preferred what Warmoth did with the concept.

I never liked it... just shit slapped on other shit to me, nothing original, nothing exciting. But you are probably gathering I'm a fun guy like that.
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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by BTL » Mon Jul 26, 2021 7:08 pm

Speaking from the perspective of someone who has spent a great deal of time thinking about how to do something novel in guitars in an impactful way, it's a seriously tough slog. I have two ideas with legs, one that is generic and one that may be eligible for IP protection. Ironically, it's the generic idea that's likely to be most successful over the long term. However, I'm hoping the other one ends up on a Fender Custom Shop model one day. If it does, it's very unlikely that it will end up on a Squier model. If it does, well...that would be pretty f'n cool.

Do with that information what you will.
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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by smjenkins » Mon Jul 26, 2021 7:29 pm

Larry Mal wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 6:38 pm
smjenkins wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 6:30 pm


Are there small builder Telemasters that predate this?
I don't know if other builders were making them, but a lot of people were making them.

If I remember right, Warmoth and maybe some other builders had been doing the Telemaster for some time, they call it the Jazzcaster:

https://warmoth.com/guitar-bodies/jazzcaster

I'm virtually certain they had been doing that for a few years before Fender caught on and responded with the official Telemaster.

But, I didn't build one, so I could be wrong about that. That's what I remember, though, and the reason I do is because some people that had been making them still preferred what Warmoth did with the concept.

I never liked it... just shit slapped on other shit to me, nothing original, nothing exciting. But you are probably gathering I'm a fun guy like that.
I've spent way too much time on the Warmoth site over the years and I got super obsessed with Telemasters when I first saw the CS ones in 2009. When I went to build my Telemaster in 2010, I called Warmoth and they couldn't make one. I ended up working with a builder to make custom body because no one made a stock one at the time. Warmoth launched their Jazzcaster body in early 2012 I beleive (this post from Warmoth in the Unofficial Warmoth forums alludes to the launch: https://www.unofficialwarmoth.com/index ... #msg276719).

I'm not saying that someone didn't build something like this before the CS ones Fender made. And I'm not saying that Fender didn't lift the design off one of those small builders, but those Make'n Music Telemasters were the catalyst for Telemaster trend, at least in the form most people think of them today.

The Telemaster might be the exception that proves the rule where Fender did make a "new" model. And by new, I mean shit slapped on other shit. :)

However, if there are older Telemasters than 2009 from other builders, I would love to know about them and learn more about this weird part of offset history.

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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by Larry Mal » Mon Jul 26, 2021 7:42 pm

smjenkins wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 7:29 pm

However, if there are older Telemasters than 2009 from other builders, I would love to know about them and learn more about this weird part of offset history.
Sounds like I'm off base with that, then- my apologies.

Maybe it was just individual builders here and there, I just remember having seen a lot of Telemaster type things for some years and then Fender came out with them, and I remember a thread in which someone was saying that they still preferred what they had seen to what Fender ended up doing.

No idea... it's been a while, and I can't actually say that I'm right about any of this. Maybe Fender really did get ahead of the curve on this one and I'm remembering it wrong.
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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by Jan Deal » Mon Jul 26, 2021 10:22 pm

sal paradise wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:14 am
What do we call Brewdog these days?
Bullies, I think https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... irm-letter

(I like the Starcaster on the right hand side best)
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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by JSett » Mon Jul 26, 2021 10:45 pm

Jan Deal wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 10:22 pm
sal paradise wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:14 am
What do we call Brewdog these days?
Bullies, I think https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... irm-letter

(I like the Starcaster on the right hand side best)
Meh, I remember all this being an 'issue' and thinking it was a little blown out of proportion. A whole lot of non-news.

61 staff members had enough of a grievance to sign the complainant. Out of ~2000 employees. That's 3%. I could probably pluck any company off the street and get a higher number than that without even trying. I know a few people that work for Brewdog and they all love working for them and think it's one of the best beer companies to be part of the team.
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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by sal paradise » Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:23 pm

johnnysomersett wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 10:45 pm
Jan Deal wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 10:22 pm
sal paradise wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:14 am
What do we call Brewdog these days?
Bullies, I think https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... irm-letter

(I like the Starcaster on the right hand side best)
Meh, I remember all this being an 'issue' and thinking it was a little blown out of proportion. A whole lot of non-news.

61 staff members had enough of a grievance to sign the complainant. Out of ~2000 employees. That's 3%. I could probably pluck any company off the street and get a higher number than that without even trying. I know a few people that work for Brewdog and they all love working for them and think it's one of the best beer companies to be part of the team.
Yep, but most companies don’t brand themselves as the saviours of humankind. Not to mention the CEO’s recent response to the advertising ban on their alcopops.

I can vouch for them treating their suppliers like crap & not paying them. I got shouted & swore at, ignored for weeks, and then blamed for delays followed by late payments. They still owe money for work my team did, which is live & publicly available. The CEO personally signs off the POs, too.

I digress.

What counts as innovation in guitars? Larry mentioned noiseless pickups. There have been plenty of adaptions like those over the years from fender: new woods, tummy cuts etc. Do they count?
I have nothing to offer anybody, except my own confusion?

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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by sal paradise » Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:25 pm

sal paradise wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:23 pm
johnnysomersett wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 10:45 pm
Jan Deal wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 10:22 pm

Bullies, I think https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... irm-letter

(I like the Starcaster on the right hand side best)
Meh, I remember all this being an 'issue' and thinking it was a little blown out of proportion. A whole lot of non-news.

61 staff members had enough of a grievance to sign the complainant. Out of ~2000 employees. That's 3%. I could probably pluck any company off the street and get a higher number than that without even trying. I know a few people that work for Brewdog and they all love working for them and think it's one of the best beer companies to be part of the team.
Yep, but most companies don’t brand themselves as the saviours of humankind. Not to mention the CEO’s recent response to the advertising ban on their alcopops.

If I were an early joiner, the IPO money is worth keeping shut for…

I can vouch for them treating their suppliers like crap & not paying them. I got shouted & swore at, ignored for weeks, and then blamed for delays followed by late payments. They still owe money for work my team did, which is live & publicly available. The CEO personally signs off the POs, too.

I digress.

What counts as innovation in guitars? Larry mentioned noiseless pickups. There have been plenty of adaptions like those over the years from fender: new woods, tummy cuts etc. Do they count?
I have nothing to offer anybody, except my own confusion?

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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by Maggieo » Tue Jul 27, 2021 6:17 am

I think the real innovation was electrifying the guitar. That's huge in the history of the instrument. So huge that many see the acoustic and the electric guitars are completely different instruments.

Right now, I think most of the innovation in electric guitar is coming from pedalmakers.
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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by Larry Mal » Tue Jul 27, 2021 7:47 am

sal paradise wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:23 pm


What counts as innovation in guitars? Larry mentioned noiseless pickups. There have been plenty of adaptions like those over the years from fender: new woods, tummy cuts etc. Do they count?
You know, it's funny, because I used to complain about the limited frequency range of guitar pickups as a natural thing to address.

Without getting too far into it, electric guitars have high impedance pickups that capture the string's vibration in a linear fashion up until about 1-6 kHz, then there is what is in effect a very steep EQ curve by a fair amount of decibels, and then there is a very radical sloping off of the high frequencies after that.

Something along the lines of this, although I am including this image for reference to my point only:

Image

In short, guitar pickups as we know them don't do a particularly accurate job of capturing the string.

So a noiseless pickup that was accurate from 20-20kHz would seem like a natural evolution.

What I didn't realize until fairly recently was that Gibson had done exactly that in the 70's, Les Paul was concerned about the same stuff that I am and so he and Gibson worked together on some guitars that had low impedance pickups, which are linear flat all the way through the human hearing spectrum and would capture the full range of the string's vibration.

Those models include the Les Paul Recording and the Les Paul Signature. There were others, and from some old catalogs I've read, it looked like Gibson was planning to branch of their guitars into low impedance and high impedance families.

It didn't seem to go anywhere, and frankly Norlin Gibson was much better at making plans then they ever were at executing any of them.

But my point is, the one major thing I would criticize Fender for not doing technologically is something that Gibson- always an innovative company throughout its history- had already done, and the market did not change.

This doesn't mean that the idea is bad, however, and I would still fault Fender for not making guitars with the same goal in mind. But in the face of a guitar market that has been taught to fear and reject technological changes rather than embrace them, and the fact that these companies have become sluggish and complacent around their success, I don't expect anything from Fender. I also feel that Gibson has finally been beaten down to where they will no longer attempt to innovate or lead the guitar market anymore.

But I am gonna get me one of them Les Paul Recordings, I tell you what.
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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by tammyw » Wed Jul 28, 2021 3:51 pm

I always forget what Starcasters are, and now I'm disappointed seeing they're just big blobby hollow bodies. Which reminds me I need to start a thread for the love of actual star shaped guitars.
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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by Veitchy » Wed Jul 28, 2021 8:58 pm

tammyw wrote:
Wed Jul 28, 2021 3:51 pm
Which reminds me I need to start a thread for the love of actual star shaped guitars.
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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by Lost In Autumn » Sat Jul 31, 2021 2:22 am

tammyw wrote:
Wed Jul 28, 2021 3:51 pm
I always forget what Starcasters are, and now I'm disappointed seeing they're just big blobby hollow bodies. Which reminds me I need to start a thread for the love of actual star shaped guitars.
Even worse, they're also stratocaster shaped objects that were sold in department stores like Best Buy and Target.

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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by s_mcsleazy » Sat Jul 31, 2021 5:49 am

ok. on the topic of pickups, can i bring up something that i've noticed from years of modding guitars? everyone always talks about impedance of the pickups (aka how many windings there are) BUT the magnets also can make a massive difference to the overall amplified volume of the guitar. here's what i've noticed.

higher impedance pickups will "usually" sound more distorted (i use usually in quotation marks because the construction can really change things) where as lower impedance pickups with stronger magnets will "usually" sound cleaner.
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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by Meriphew » Sat Jul 31, 2021 7:47 am

These are great looking. Lopez might be my fave FCS Masterbuilder. I love these Marauders as well.

Image

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