Subway Guitars Tele

I picked up a Tele knock off from Subway guitars in Bekeley CA as guitar, largely, to test pickups related to a larger guitar related project. It, as far as I can tell, is a mix of a Warmoth Tele neck and possibly a Warmoth swamp ash body routed for P90s. As I haven't pulled the neck off to check to see if there are any manufacture marks on there I'm going with my best guess.

The neck is a modernized 21 fret Tele neck, maple, with rosewood fretboard, possibly 10" radius neck, "pearl" inlays and uses and adjustable trussrod like more modern Fender designs.

The control set up is pretty straight forward like most Tele variations are, master tone, master volume, three way toggle. Unlike most Tele clones the controls are set up much more like some PRS or Hamer guitars in that they aren't mounted on a chrome plate on the body. It took a little getting used to because I have an "Esquire" style Tele that uses more of a traditional Fender lay out. It took a little getting used to because the toggle is mounted near the ass end of the guitar but that means it shifts the volume control closer to the bridge pickup for easier access for volume swells.

Another departure from a more traditional Tele set up was that the guitar ran a dual set of P90s. More on these later.

Finish? Any one familiar with Totem guitars would probably dig it. The finish was intentionally set up to look like that it had seen years of gigging. Chances are that the body was probably painted, by brush not an air gun, with tung oil. While there were numerous areas where you could see where the bristles were dragged through the finish and there were areas that the finish actually had several drips in it it is any one's guess if thoes were intentional or some one was just not having good day. The routing for the pickups were pretty rough too and in fact you can see that some one probably did the pickup routing free hand with a router and didn't use a template. There is actually a large amount of wood putty to shore up an area where the router wandered woefully of course on the neck pickup cavity. Over all the finish work is like some one's grade school wood shop project. Heck, even the tone and volume knobs aren't even in a straight line.

Bridge. Fixed position Strat style, top mounted string routing. I would actually liked to have had a through the body string routing but this unit isn't bad, just not my prefence.

Tuners? Who knows... no markings or indication who made them but no sliping and they tune up easy.

I play kind of a grab bag of muisc, a little Delta blues here, a little country there, some jazz licks dropped in for good measure and rock and roll on top but I also dig sluged out doom rock like Black Sabbath, Eyehategod, Down, COC, Sleep.

Amp, Rivera M60, all tube. The only effect I use is a reissued Marshall Gov. Other than that it's all hands and on board gain settings. Most of the time it goes in straight, clean, and no reverb even on the "Twin" setting for the M60.

Starting off I'm 90% sure that the pickups in the guitar were either Mighty Mite or the far East made Kent Armstrongs. Initially I was pleased to get a Tele set up with P90s in it but after playing the guitar for several months, especially back to back to my other two guitars I noticed two things, 1) there was an large amount of hiss coming through the amp every time I played it, 2) in comparison to the other two guitars I own, one set up with a Bill Lawerence single coil and the second with Duncan SH-159's that the P90s on the Subway generated nothing but "pick tone" and not much else.

To try to track down the hiss I swiched from guitar to guitar, amp to amp, and chord to chord. While even the very best tube amp will have a degree of hiss even with humbuckers the stock P90s were like listening to a radio station that wasn't very well dialed in.

I later scrapped the stock pickups and dropped in some of Dave Stephen's SD Zephyr Blues X set. Awsome pickups. Simply amazing. I will compair the new Zephyr Blues X P90s to a very hot but very sweet set of true vintage Gibson P90s. I can't say enough good things about these pickups, really. But the ones that came "stock" on the Subway were just ass.

To be really honest, I was really beganning to hate the sound of the Subway Tele and since I had it past the two week no fault return window I was facing the prospect of either giving the thing away or selling it at a loss.

Initially I'd say off the shelf the guitar's tone was about a 5 but with all the hiss coming from the low end pickups it drops down to a 4. That said, with the new Zephyr Blues X set that now live in there I'd give the tone, and the tone alone, a 10.

Fit, action, and finish. Ooooh... eeeeeh...jeez.... As mentioned earlier the set up was really very rough. I had even noticed that not all of the screws on the tuning machines were flush, I pulled them out and with a hand held drill very carfully deepend the holes so they woud. I took the added measure and put bee's wax on all of the threads to lock them into place and to prevent moisture affecting the wood. The was a lot of fret buzz that didn't become obvious first off but Subway did try to level the buzzing frets but did not eliminate the buzz. The intonation was really far off too especially for the high E and B strings. I can see that really being a problem with a traditional three saddle Tele bridge but not really with a six saddle Strat style.

Subway did dress the frets on the guitar and their turn over was very fast and they were very friendly about it but the job wasn't well done.

The pickup balance was awful but that's about par with low end pickups. No pole piece adjustments, no height adjustment. Repeated atteemptes with a fresh, new, well sized screwdriver only met with stripped screws.

I later took the whole guitar, with the new Zephyr Blues X to be dropped in and took it across the Bay to Real in SF. Real, by the way, like Subway, has worked on and sold many guitars to local and well know recording artists. Real had developed a reputation of being rude, snobby, and diffucult to deal with and sometimes, even not doing top grade work. Since they were one of the few guitar stores in this area that actually did their own work and I was disapointed with the quality of work from Subway I decided, what the heck I'll give them another chance.

After I told Real about the fret buzzing and intonation problems the recomended putting the Subway Tele on their Plek mill and have the neck adjusted, re intonated and the frets milled. I initially balked at the price that they were asking for the cost of the operation because it was $100 short of what I paid for the guitar in the first place.

After getting the guitar back from Real I was amazed at the difference not only with the improved tone with the new pickups but the neck and intonation were were just amazing. If having the neck Plekked on a hodge podge of guitar parts could make a $300 guitar play more like what you would expect out of a $1500 + guitar I can only imagine what it would do for a guitar from a premium builder. Really, I've played PRS and custom shop Fenders that had not felt nearly as good than my low end Tele clone after having the neck Plekked, it's that good.

After having the new pickups dropped in the guitar techs at Real comented how good it sounded.

Will the guitar stand up to live playing? Sure. It's something you can take to a gig or to a buddy's house and not worry about it. If it gets a scratch or a ding on the body, who cares and if anything it may improve the looks. Even though I've had the guitar for about five months it's already warn to the wood in a couple of places and I have a tendancy to baby my guitars so I'm not surfing on it like SRV or dragging it on the floor like Rory Gallagher or even tossing it up in the air and play it behind my head like Charlie Patton.

Will the harware last? The bridge will but I'm not too sure about the tuners. If the start to go I may either drop in some Gotoh Kluson or Grovers.

Would I use it in a gig or as a back up? Sure, now I will but before.... jeez.

Subway is easy to deal with, ready to please and their two week no fault return polocy even for guitar purchaced over the net is very generous it just that the level of craftsmanship really isn't very high. Oddly enough they sell a lot of vintage high end equipment and do so at a reasonable price but factor in about an aditional $100-$300 to the purchace price to really get the guitar dialed.

I've heard other people coment on poor turnorver times at Subway but that wasn't my experience. If you are a frequent visitor to Harmony-Central you'll probably read more people having problems with Ed Roman than you will with Subway.

As a guitarist I'm a rank amiture, that's for damn sure but I've been playing music and different sorts of instruments for about thirty years. That said I do apreciate a high level of craftsmanship and customer service. I also own an "Esquire" style guitar set up and customized by Michael Dolan from Santa Rosa, a Guild Bluesbird (an under apreciated an unrecognized guitar) and a Martin D15.

I knew that the Subway Tele was what it was before buying it so I can't fault them. Would I purchace another guitar from them? Maybe but only if it was from a named manifacture first not something they put together from parts kicking around in a back room.

If lost or stolen would I replace it with a guitar purchaced from the same place? Not really. I think I'd be better served either getting a USA Custom or Warmoth set up and pay a tech to set it up. I'd really miss the SD pickups because they are freakin' great P90s.

I now love the guitar, warts and all but only after $200 worth of new pickups and $270 worth of neck milling and labor to get it to place where it is now. Let's see, the guitar cost me $300 with a trade in of a Mitchell 2x12 cab and a Japanese made acoustic dose it now mean I have a $770 guitar? No, sadly things don't work that way but it took that additional $470 to make it a playable musical instrument vs being an entry level student guitar.

I'd recomend their "house brand" guitars as a back up or a gig guitar. You can get something pretty playable off the shelf but be willing to scrap the pickups and pay extra to get it really dialed. You will get something one of a kind so you won't look or sound like any one else but there is a price for that kind of originality.

If you want to stay on the bargain route in terms of replacing the pickups Bill Lawerence makes some great pickups for not a lot of cash. I loved my Bill Lawerence L-290TL-E so much I bought a set of their Strat pickups for another project guitar. The L-290TL-E has a lot of guts for a single coil and has even more output than my Duncan humbuckers.

I would also recomend bypassing either Duncan or Dimarzio in terms of replacing a humbucker or P90 with Dave's Stephen's SD pickups, he's that good. These are botique pickups that will deliver authentic vintage tone without problems usually associated with vintage equipment, high price, low output, and hiss.