Product: Stevenson Telecaster Hollow Body
Price Paid: US $1600.00
Submitted
12/05/2002
at
12:00am
by
Jonathan Palevsky
Email: haikupoetsub at aol<dot>com
Features
:
10
This guitar was made for me (It is a custom guitar after all) in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in October of 2002. It is a hollowbody Telecaster shape. The body is chambered basswood with a figured maple solid top, and an f-hole .
The neck is maple and the fingerboard madagascar rosewood. There are 22 Dunlop 6105 frets.
The guitar is finished with a thin satin lacquer
finish-custom formulated thin polyurethane.
The hardware is aGotoh fixed bridge and sperzel tuners.
Theelectronics consist of 2 Seymour Duncan '59 pickups on either end and a Seymour Duncan Classic Stack in the middle.
There is 5 way switch and a single volume and tone control.
All the hardware is gold the pickups are black.
The guitar comes with a nice hardshell case.
Everything is pretty well top of the line and as you are paying for whatever you want on the guitar you get what you want!
Sound
:
10
I am a classical guitarist by training (yes I even have the degree...actually two of them!) and I have recently gotten into playing jazz after not playing for ever. The combination of the single and double coil sounds gives lots of variety. I am not any kind of guitar maven...I'm a player...I bought the guitar together with an amp from Stevenson Custom Guitars. The amp has more than enough volume to get me evicted and has a nice round sound. It uses tubes and gets hot...it has knobs it sounds great...I'm a player not an engineer...get it...
I love the sound of this instrument. It is very responsive to the tone control and I like having one rather than two. I like that the sound never gets too tinny...
Action, Fit, & Finish
:
9
The guitar was very well set up though it might be a tad too light in the action for me. I am a finger player not a plectrum player...but I got used to this very easily. There was a slight problem with buzzing which was easily corrected by adjusting the bridge. There are no flaws in this guitar. The finish is gorgeous...it gleams...and I mean gleams
Reliability/Durability
:
10
This guitar is very light and it is a hollow body...I haven't tried the Pete Townsend thing with it and I don't plan to. What I love about it is that it's very comfortable to play. It's very very light.....YEAH.....you can sit on your leather couch and entertain yourself for hours. The scale of the neck is great and the feel of the neck is sweet. This thing will hold up but it's delicate because of what it is not how it's built. The neck is beautifully set into the body...I don't gig any more (me havem job now) so I can't anser for straps and such things.
Customer Support
:
10
OK here's the deal ladies and gents...I am one person...Ted Stevenson is one person. He makes me a guitar. He services the guitar. He ships the guitar. There is no factory, no huge company...isn't this the way it should be. When I bought my classical guitar from Oskar Graf in Kingston Ontario (which I still own today he is a great maker) There was him and me. I wanted to have that relationship again with an electric instrument. The amazing thing is that it didn't cost very much. It was about $2200 Canadian when all was said and done and that comes to about $1600 USD. Why would I buy a factory made guitar when I can have one made by a real craftsman who will make whatever I want...within reason! The guitar is covered for life by the maker. While ted was making the guitar he sent me pictures of the process which I really loved. I felt involved and it was lots of fun to see it develop.
Overall Rating
:
10
I have been playing since 1973...I own a hand made classical by Oskar Graf (1984, A Baroque Guitar, Maya ES 175D Lawsuit copy, An Orville by Gibson ES 335 copy.
I am very happy with this guitar in fact I am going to work with Ted Stevenson again to build the perfect ES type guitar. I will be in Montreal 12/02 and we will discuss what we are going to do. He is going to create the ultimate ES 335/350/446 combination...it should be awesome. He is a great craftsman and loves his work.
I love that this guitar is tiny and light. It feels like playing the air! It does take faith to ask someone you barely know to build you an instrument you haven't played...but I have every confidence that it will work out just as well the second time round with Stevenson Guitars as the first. So Sportsfans...why not take a chance and get what you really want rather than what Fender and Gibson think you want!
