Sneak Peek: Reso Tele

There's still no internet at the home/shop locale which is driving me nuts. Sorry about the slow reply times and overall inefficient contact. Give me a ring if you need to get in touch fast!

I've been working up a storm and I hope I can get some good blogging in tomorrow (lots of good customer gear pics/clips and stuff coming up) but I only have about an hour to bust at the wifi-loaded park in town right now so I figured I'd share a project I've been working on in the middle of the night bit by bit: it's a Tele... but with an 8.25" Beard biscuit cone snuck in under the hood. It's rear-loaded and the body is carved out inside to make maximum air room for better tone and volume.

The good bit is: it works! It did exactly what I thought it would and it has acoustic volume in the range of a 00-size guitar with maybe a bit more zing and punch in the mids and treble. I still need to finish it off (I want to find a different mounting ring for the resonator below the "back plate") before I make a proper post about it but I thought it might be fun to peek at.

The enameled NorPac steel railway sign is set out from the back of the resonator a bit which works like a "flatback banjo resonator" of the 1920s... it deflects all the sound coming from the back of the resonator out to the sides and pumps volume up by about twice (to my ears) compared to the Nat'l ResoTone I liked a lot (but did not like the body shape of).

This is definitely a design in testing... I really do love the way it turned out (especially with the dual magnetic pickup options) but I already have ideas about how to streamline the whole build process as a totally custom-fit instrument.

And now that I'm done with this post... it's off to emails and then to playing this on a park bench.