Memphis Telecaster Custom Copy

I got this 12 or 13 years ago from a friend of mine. No idea where he got it, but he was a metalhead at the time so this guitar didn't really interest him at all.So he said I could have it, and was damn glad to take it! Guitar was(and still is) pretty beat(looks like it had already been gigged with quite a bit), but was still pretty much solid. All I had to do was rewire the volume and tone controls for the neck pickup and I was set. This thing will outlast me. It's solid wood, which is rare for a cheap beginner's guitar, which this was intended to be.Two pickups-a Tele bridge pickup and a neck humbucker with separate tone and volume pots for each pickup. Maple neck.

I play a lot of classic country, blues, early rock and roll and garage/punk type stuff, and this thing will handle all of it.I'm playing it through a Music Man RP 65 112 combo. Effects are a Danelectro Fab Tone distortion, BLT Slap Echo, and Tuna Melt tremolo. The bridge pickup is classic Tele twang, the middle setting will get those classic Keith Richards tones, and the neck humbucker will get a nice, sorta Gibson-y jazz tone.Unlike the other two reviews I find the stock pickups to be perfectly fine. Might replace the bridge pickup sometime in the future though. Plays like a dream. Nice, fast neck and the cheap imitation Schallers still hold their tune extremely well.

Don't know about how this guitar came out of the factory, but it was setup very well when I got it.The bridge does have some rust, but still intonates just fine. The finish is kinda beat. The paint was already starting to wear along the edges and the back, and since I've beaten the hell out of it since then, its only gotten worse. She ain't the prettiest thing to look at. But no biggie. All that matters to me is playability and tone, and this thing's got that. I absolutely love this guitar. It's one I definitely am not going to part with.

I'm mainly a bedroom player now, but in the past I have gigged with this without a backup several times and it has never crapped out on me.I've dropped this thing, had drunk morons knock it over and step all over it, and it STILL held up. Those 70s Japanese lawsuit guitars were built solid.

This company no longer exists, so customer support ain't gonna happen.

I've been playing since about '91, have had several "nicer" guitars that I've sold over the years, but this is the one I've kept. If I ever gig again I might get another Tele or Strat to have a backup, and I would like to get something like a Gretsch 6120, but this thing ain't going nowhere. It's part of my arm.

I bought this in Chicago from a pawn shop for $150 I think, in 1990.

Replaced pickups with a Bartolini and a Seymour Duncan.

Had a cut away put in it in 1992 for comfort, probably should have remained standard...

It is rock solid.

Like a Tele!

Set it up myself.

If this is one of the 70's models, it's in better shape than I am.

Wish I knew, but don't need it, would be nice to just know the history.

Love to hear from anybody else that has one...

this one is in Sydney.
I think they are known as the law suit models, for good reason.

This guitar is from the seventies and was made in Japan. I picked it up for $100 in 1994 at Krazy Kat Music in San Antonio. It's a full scale, but I'm not sure of how many frets becasue it's not sitting here. I have four Fender Telecasters and this is basically an exact copy of a Tele in look and size. The body appears to be made of Mahogany and it weighs a lot. It's coated in a white plastic finish, which is chipping away, just like a Fender finish would. The neck is a four bolt-on job and is maple. It has an adjustable truss rod. It came with the stock Memphis pickups. The humbucker up a the neck is great. The single coil down by the bridge was terribly wimpy, so I replaced it with a Seymour Duncan 50's reissue single coil tele pickup, which has a lot of tele crunch. The switches are exactly like the Feneder Tele Custom's, whcih is to say that it's configured sort of like an ES 335 with toggle up above the strings on the body and two seperate volume and tone knobs per pickup down below. It has a black pickguard that is just like the large Feneder Tele Custom pickguards. The bridge was mostly rusted out and wouldn't intune properly, so I replaced it with a Allparts bridge. The strings originally went through the body to the back of the guitar for feeding through the bridge, but the holes didn't line up with a Fender or Allparts bridge, so we doctored an Allparts bridge and the strings setthrough the base of that bridge and not through the body. The tuners look to not be poriginal; they are chrome and look like imitation Schallers. They are pretty darn good. I suspect the original ones were garbage. The neck is of regular cut for a tele. It's straight and plays well. There is quite a bit of urethane on the back (like 70's maple Fenders) but it's not annoying, actually for some reason. This guitar plays very well and is extremely solid. This guitar also had definitely been used in a gig setting prior to my ownership, as there is some wear from gigging. If the frets have been redone, someone did a masterful job, becasue you can't tell. I have only seen one other of these and Homer Henderson, the one man band from Dallas, plays it. It's exactly like mine. I would place the quality of this guitar over my Mexican telecaster custom but beneath the Japanese reissue tele customs. I had a '76 Tele custom that was quite similar to this Memphis except for the finish, and the Memphis plays better. It stays in excellent tune and sounds great. I would buy another one of these guitars if I ever found one.

This guitar has the clasic Tele custom sound of Keith Richards. The humbucker is beefy in a Chuck Berry way and the bridge pickup is all Tele. I play this guitar through either a '64 blackface Fender Concert Amp (4 10" speakers) or a 70's Vibrolux. It has no noise at all on any setting, which is great. I love the way this guitar looks and sounds. It's a little heavy, but you get used to it and it's no heavier tha a 70's Fender Tele Custom. Super solid guitar- I spent more on the Fender tweed case than on the orginal price of the guitar.

It's hard to say what this guitar was really like new, but I suspect it was pretty good from the star. Everything about it is solid and straight and it was made of real woods and cut properly. The original nut is still on and perfect.

I use this guitar for gigging quite a bit and it's great.

This company is long gone. The stuff from the 80's-90's is not at all the same and from my standpoint, nothing but pure garbage. They did make a lot of good stuff in the 70's including Les Paul copies, an ES 335 copy (I have one) and a P-Bass copy (good necks). Supposedly these guitars were made in the same factory as Ibanez and I believe it. Everything about them screams early Ibanez, whihc is top of the line Pawn Shop gear.

I've been playing guitar on stage since about 1993. Started playing in 90. I've been in bands singing since 83. I gig about 5 nights per week and play guitar, bass, drums and vocals, depending on the show. This guitar in in the frontline rotation ahead of 3 Fenders, 1 Danelectro, 1 Charvel and the Memphis ES 335 copy