Ampcat's Gear
(Guitars)

Ebony Tele

This is the first Telecaster I ever owned (well, technically I've NEVER owned a

Tele, as I have never paid for a Tele made by Fender). I built it in 1994 - I had always liked the Tele shape, but I never cared for any of the finishes I had seen them in. I had already built a couple guitars

My wife's (then my girlfriend) father took me to a shell dealer he knew at Brown Field in South San Diego named Joe Biby. The warehouse was an old gymnasium from the 40's, complete with wood floor & basketball hoops. The place was a mess, but there were tons of shells, and I was there to find mother-of-pearl & abalone for an inlay project I was working on.

After about an hour of digging around, I came across a pile of black wood. The boards were roughly 30"x12", about 2" thick. After a little scraping I identified the wood as Maccassar Ebony - somewhat valuable (there were around 12 boards, I figure they were probably worth $60-80 a piece at the time). I asked Joe about the wood, and he didn't recall where it had come from, but he guessed he'd had it for 20+ years. He only wanted $20 per board - needless to say, I bought the lot. The next day I drove to Cut & dried Haardwoods in Solana Beach, and sold most of the wood. I kept a few boards, thinking I would use them for fretboards.

About a month later I got a burr up my ass to make a Telecaster. I bought everything I needed from Stewart-MacDonald, including an unfinished ash body, thinking I would put a cool finish on it. While I was working on it, I planed some of the ebony I had bought from Joe. As it turns out, it was the most amazing wood I had Ever seen - it looked like Maccassar Ebony, but it had very dense grain, and the streaks of color ranged from black to grey to brown to purple - it was really amazing. I drove to C7D the next day and had them re-saw & sand one of the boards for me - I ended up with a beautiful bookmatched set of ebony tops. I then planed the top of the ash body to accommodate the new top, and glued it all up. The result was really amazing (I'll try to get a better picture of the top up soon.)

I never really liked the finish job I did on it, and very recently I decided to touch it up a little. I took a random orbital sander, and 220 grit paper I started to sand the top. The result was a very nice matte finish - I liked it so much that I decided to leave it that way.

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