Teisco Del Rey

I have had my Teisco Del-Ray since I was 12 years old....It still plays great and it was my first electric guitar..a couple of little nicks on it but it has with stood the test of time.....it was bought for me by my grandmother back in 1964...these were the first ones made..I guess....I still have on the original strings....that could be good or bad but when I plug it into my new amp it stills sounds great....

it just sounds great....it is not noisy...full sound...one pickup...it is a tan and black color....

Transparent Sunburst finish originally, now is flat black w/ black and white checkerboard. Strat/cyclone body style. Original Bridge, Gibson stop bar tailpeice. Non locking cheap ass tuners.(work very well though!!) Rosewood fretboard, mahagony body and neck, very good action. Hardshell Case, Strap, Cable. Made in 1960's in Japan. 22 frets. 1 volume control, 1 tone control. 2 pickup selectors.

This guitar is awesome. I play punk/alternative kind of stuff and this guitar can take anything I throw at it. I use a Peavey Half Stack with a Digi Tech RP80 Modeling Processor, but it doesn't really need the effects when I play slower, more melodic songs. So far I have had no noise problems and no buzzing sounds of any sort.( unlike other owners!!) It kind of sounds like a strat. Although it has more of a variety tha any strat I have played. I LOVE IT.

I wouldn't know how this guitar was set up back in the 60's. It was my dad's before mine and I was a gift to him by his cousin, although my dad had one just like it when he was younger. ( Purchased at K-mart). When I got it, the first thing I did was punk it out. I painted it flat black, wrapped electric tape around it, slapped a few bumper stickers on it, and even whacked it with a butcher knife a few times to make it look well worn. I kind of regret it now but it looks really cool. Before I...uh, punked it out, it had a Black/Red/Yellow sunburst finish and it had a few scratches in it becaue the first owner owned about 10 cats (enough said). Other than that, GREAT!!!

This guitar has and will withstand many gigs to come. I look forward to giving this guitar to my kids! I have had to replace a few things on it though. I replaced a broken potentiometer on it (volume knob). replaced the strap buttons. (taped the strap on anyways). and replaced the old tremolo, with a gibson stop bar tailpeice. This guitar can and will be played in upcoming shows in my band. No need for a backup.

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I have been playing since I was about 5. I am now 15. THat's about ten years. But I am a very serious artist for my age. I also own an Ibaez electric, and a Fender acoustic/electric. If this guitar were stolen, I couldn't buy another one like it. It is the only model I have ever seen like it. I'd just have to whoop whoever's ass that stole my guitar and take it back. I love everything about this guitar. My fav. feature is the small lightweight body.

I have a Teisco,not sure if it`s actually a DelRay model.I believe it to be Japanese,got mine in a pawn shop in the late 60`s (My first guitar)It has one volume and one tone button.The guitar itself is very solid,like a table top with a maple neck.Originally it was sunburst but I painted it totally black.The shape is different than most,almost like Brian May`s guitar.(with two points on top and very rounded on the bottom)It has 22 frets,and one large solid pickup,looks almost like a pickup for a bass.On the head it has a Teisco logo (Teisco in bold letters on a crown)

I haven`t played it in years,I just got it back from my brother who had it in his attic.I remember using a small amp with it when I was young with a distortion pedal and it sounded like a train coming off the tracks !!!!
Funny enough,it is the only guitar I ever owned that I could lower the action all the way down and not have the strings noise up off of the frets...giving it a strange violin like sound or like a pedal steel,really smooth and fast.
It was enjoyable to play,specially starting out when the solo`s on it sounded much better than i could really play.

All I remember is lowering the action so I could surf the fretboard,I could make that thing scream.Great for fingertapping and you could make anything you play sound as heavy as shit.

This guitar is what it is,a relic of days gone by,nice to still have it but don`t know if it is really a practicle guitar for anything but enjoying for yourself,although it is solid as a piece of furniture.

No such thing...no company,no warranty,no kidding

Mostly I dont play anymore,it was nice to have it back for sentimental reasons and most of all I remember having fun being young,getting my first electric guitar and pestering the hell out of the neighbors with my bad playing.

the best part about this is that i actually did my research and know everything about it.... hooray!
okay, this teisco was made in 1967, in japan, don't ask me where...
23 frets, if you count the one by the neck pickup that has no metal fret on the end of the neck. otherwise, for the math uninclined, 22 frets. It has a kind of tan, tobacco starburst combination, black to brown to tanish... and has 3 chromeish adjustable pickups... a volume and tone knob, black knob, white letters and numbers. three separate pickup switches ,that, if a little work is done on them, do not turn on and off nearly as much as others say... i guess mine is in better condition. I don't know the pickups, but if you like the vintage look, they are perfect... neck i would assume maple, and body the same, but i'm not sure... very very solid though.
body is a strat combined with a gibson artist. Looks a bit like a 70's fender showman...
The bridge is separate from the tremelo system, and i don't even know what the tremelo is. It's some wierd but awesome spring system, and great for going down like 2 whole steps in a flash, then back up again. It has a chrome cover on it which i like, but makes it that much harder to find a smaller hardshell case. The tuners are non locking as far as i know, and if they are locking, i want to find the man that messed up the design, cuz if the string is not wound well, the "A" goes down a half step pretty easy. It has a chrome pick guard that goes back and forth from shiny to "misted"...
THe guitar does not have that nice cable plugin that goes into the guitar, the 1/4 inch jack into my guitar from my amp sticks straight out, but other than that, i have nothing to complain about.

oh yeah, it's an et-310 for the model number

This guitar is great for just about anything... i would only use this guitar for lead not rhythm because it just has so much personality, on rhythm it would crowd out everybody else on stage, maybe even vocals.
I have used it with three amps. My first, a crate 10 watt practice. and on that it sounded like a squier bullet. piece of crap! but on a rogue gsr100 it sounds better than most of the guitars i have played, including quite a few high to pro level fenders, gibsons, and ibanez guitars. It so totally beats out the new gibson sg and fender strat special plus custom.
The volume doesn't really vary on the guitar itself, since youv'e got two choices for volume, off and 10... but the tone knob's amazing... you can go from death metal to funk with the flick of the knob (and a pedal or two, cuz funk isn't gonna need a digitech death metal pedal) Very bright sound...

I love this guitar, but it has one fatal problem. the pickup noise is horrible with factory adjustments... BUT YOU CAN ADJUST THEM WITH THE OL SCREW DRIVER!!!

other than the pickups, the action is very fast, very good. of course, i like a thicker neck... the pickup adjustments suck, but you can change it. i use the neck pickup real high, the mid pickup real low, and the bridge somewhere in the middle. it tends to go out of tune, and i would changing the tuners... the bridge has a very hard to find tremelo bar... i do not have one! floyd rose doesn't work

Its 37 years old, and had 3 owners.this guitar is very sturdy.. i know, i've thrown it against a wall during rehearsal once and it didn't get a dink. i would use it to the ends of the earth.

TEISCO DEL RAY IS DEAD>>>> OHHH>>

I've been playing for 4 years. This guitar is my baby, i love it because it is sooooo original. no one else has a guitar even slightly like or at the level of mine that i know.. if you see one of these, i would highly recommend getting it... i'm gonna keep this forever. plus it's valuable!

This is my take on the teisco del ray! I found one at the Thrift store for $40.00, needless to say I bought it. It is an attractive looking sunburst hollowbody that yes still works. Yet, when you're playing,it will just all of a sudden sound like someone dropped a whole stem of firecrackers into one of the F-holes. I think it's funny. Anyways I will always keep my teisco b/c it shows where music was and where it is now. If I am fortunate enough to have a huge fireplace my del ray will hang proudly above its mantle. it is beautiful!!!!!!!

This guitar was my cousin''s guitar when he was about 10 back in 1966, and i know for a fact these were made in japan, a sort of copy of a Fender Mustang or Jaguar. It has a solid body made of some sort of particle board or pressed-fiber board and a bolt-on neck made of maple. i believe it only has 18 frets and the tremolo arm was missing when i got it 20 years ago. It has three single-coil pickups and three volume knobs with those three rocker switches that keep switching off when i play. one tone knob that was actually wired in reverse making "1" brightest and "10" the flattest. the tuners were all plastic handled and cracking, and the guitar would not stay in tune. the guitar is a tobacco-burst finish with a unpainted steel pickgaurd. the body is definitely a cross between a mustang and jaguar, and the nicest looking thing is the teisco del rey badge on the headstock.

i play mostly blues/rock and jazz, and i had my guitar tech re-wire the pickups so those rockers are just for show. i just use the three volume knobs in different combinations to get the sound i want. i like to use the neck and middle pickups together or the middle and bridge pickups together. the pots on the guitar are basically the same from "1" until about "7", so i run the volume knobs at "7" for a more smooth sound and turn them to "10" for more bite. i had the tone knob rewired the correct way; "1" being muddy and "10" being bright. using two pickups in combination yields those out-of-phase #2 and #5 settings on fender stratocasters with the five-way switch. the bridge pickup is too bright and the neck pickup is too muddy for me, but combined with the middle pickup it sounds pretty good for a cheap guitar. the pickups are a little noisy, but no noisier than any vintage strat or tele with single coil pickups. clean tone is nice and bassy, and overdrive gives the pickups a real midrange bite reminiscient of jimmy page's tone on the first led zeppelin album. i play through a 1966 fender black-faced 50 watt bassman head and a 2X12 music man cabinet, with an ernie ball volume pedal, a vox wah, fulltone fulldrive 2 pedal, a voodoo lab microvibe and analog chorus,and danelectro dan echo, rocky road spinning speaker, and corned beef reverb pedals for effects. i also can piggy back a music man 212 one thirty combo off the second bassman input for a layered sound since the music man has vibrato and reverb. i can get a lot of different tones out of the teisco through all those pedals, and each pickup acts differently through them.

it's not fair for me to judge the fit and finish of this guitar new, for i received it neglected for 15 years, and i neglected it for 20 more. but, my guitar tech adjusted the neck, replaced the cracked ivory nut with a graphite one, replaced the tuners which were hard to turn with grover mini tuners, he filed all the frets down and got the action nice and low, and converted the broken floating tremolo to a fixed bridge style, although currently i'm looking for a externally mounted tremolo like a bigsby to put on it now. having those sitches bypassed and having the volume knobs control each pickup independently was a good idea, since many people have the same problem with the switches cutting off. overall, it has a rugged design and i'm not afraid to bump it or drop it, it's been through worse.

this guitar has withstood years of neglect, moisture, heat, cold, and humidity of an attic and two basements. it's had beer spilled on it, cigarettes ashed on it, and i've bumped it up against my speaker cabinet getting feed back many times. with the $90 i spent on a set-up, the tuners, and nut, and i have a guitar that stays in tune, it's very lightweight without being flimsy, you can bend the neck and it comes back for more. i use it as my backup guitar in case my hamer archtop double cutaway breaks a string, or if i'm just going for a more aggresive sound to cut through the mix if the club i'm playing in has bad acoustics. but, i would play it as my only guitar without a backup if i needed to, but the neck is a little wide for my small hands and i would definitely would feel it in my wrists the next day.

the company went out of business years ago, but one shows up in a pawn shop every now and again.

when i got this guitar at ten i just started playing, but it was too hard to play with it's wide neck, high action, and tuning problems. it sat for 15 years before that, then it sat almost 20 more before i took it to the doctor. now, it feels solid and worn like an old chevy pickup or leather jacket. it has tons of vibe too, since everyone is playing a fender or gibson. walter at alpha music in virgina beach said it best, "...it's never going to be a killer playing guitar, but it's the best i can do for it...i'd crank up the action, put 11's on it and use it for a slide guitar, those pickups would be perfect for that..." well, i still need to learn slide, so i just use skinny top/heavy bottoms and deal with the glitches, hey, it's my first guitar and i still have it.

I assume that my Teisco was made in the 1960's in Japan. It is a beauty, with utterly weird looks: imagine a Constructivist tractor company's prototype for Harry Partch's modified guitar. The guitar has an (extremely) solid body, 3-pickups, and a graduated tan-black (brownburst?) finish. The body shape is hard to describe: You know the kind of outward-pointing cut-aways that most Teiscos have?. Well, it's got one of those on the bass side, and the other side is sawn way back; completely shoulderless. The body supports two broad,bulky (3/4" deep!) chrome boxes which serve as scratch-plates and control mounts. There three feather-touch, rocker type on/off switches for the pickups, a single volume control, and a knob marked 'tone'. These last two are set into the body at ninety degrees. The neck has a white binding, which is inlayed into the fretboard in the appropriate places to form fret-markers. The body is quite small, and the neck is short and wide, making the huge, hockey-stick headstock look even bigger. The tuners are just how I like them, very firm, but smooth. The bridge is a big, fat metal bar, with a threaded wheel at each end for height adjustment. It has a fully functioning tremelo, and a nifty hinged tailpiece cover which is great for stashing picks in. This guitar came with original case (plush green felt lining) and an ancient leather strap. Oh, and a curly black lead.

This guitar sounds great to my ears. I play a kind of twangy-ass, low register rumble (Scientists meet Luther Perkins meet Suicide meet early Unsane playing "Who Do You Love?"). I don't have a proper amp right now, so I just put it through a JVC tape-deck mic input (cranked up full), then I use a Panasonic, er, boom-box as a power amp. This sounds gutsy enough without any extra effects, but I use a little bit of tape-echo (Danelectro "DanEcho") to make it chug along better. I use the bridge pickup only, in order to get enough twang, but this setting still gives me enough bottom end, even through my crappy amp set-up. (I have tried to find other good pickup combinations, but the neck and middle pickups sound really boomy and awful).
As it is this guitar is quite limited in sonic range. The volume pot is full of muck, and only operates on '10', so I'm not sure what the guitar sounds like at low volume. Fortunately, the manufacturers took a creative interpretation of the term 'tone' when designing the other control knob. Instead of changing the mixture of bass/treble, this knob acts more like a second volume control, or maybe like some sort of timbre control. In other words, it doesn't change the actual level of the output, just the amount that the output is overdriven. This is extremely handy for me, if only because of my unusual amp set up and playing style.

This guitar's action always feels funny. The pickups are the same height as the chrome boxes on the body, and can't be adjusted. This would be okay if the neck wasn't set so low. You can adjust the bridge height through quite a wide distance, but this doesn't fix the problem entirely. Unless you want a really high action, the strings are always too close to the pickups. This is a pain because I keep hitting my pick on the top edges of the pickups, and I can't get my fingers under the strings to finger-pick properly.
There are a couple of other design flaws which I have had to contend with:
The on/off switches are mounted on the bass side of the body, so they are very easily turned off when playing. This isn't too bad because I only use one pickup setting, so I just stick a piece of tape over the switches.
The fretboard is quite flat, and the frets are thin.
The most annoying thing about this guitar is that the tremelo arm just slots loosely into a metal collar, and keeps falling out onto my foot.
Apart from these problems, the guitar is finished to a high standard, and has been well maintained all of its long life.

This guitar is incredibly rugged and is not likely to fall apart in the next fifty years (I'm not kidding). The only things that could possibly break are the plastic rocker switches, and these don't stick out far enough to make this a danger. The strap buttons are solid, and the finish can withstand really rough treatment. Once I get the volume control fixed, I would be prepared to take my Teisco on a drunken hitch-hiking tour of Westland woolsheds and gang HQ's.

The Teisco Company probably folded before I was born.

This is the only guitar I own, and I don't think I will ever sell it unless I am starving. My friend Beth found it in the antique store and for ages we all kept going in to check it out. I conned my bank into giving me a credit card so that I could buy it. It is by far the coolest guitar I've ever seen. It was a real find for a small place like Dunedin: the shop owner said that he got it in an auction, so I imagine some old guy has been looking after it for years and hasn't let anyone else get there hands on it until now. Apart from it's overall looks, I love this guitar for the endearing little details: the cool fret markers, the crooked little labels below the switches which say 'mic 1', 'mic 2', 'mic 3'. Most important, it has an absolutely brutal sound. Sure, it could have been designed more ergonomically, but (apart from the tremelo arm problem, which is probably fixable), I can live with this guitar's faults because it's got PERSONALITY.
Incidentally, I would be interested to know if anyone else has seen a Teisco like mine. All the pictures of Teiscos that I have found are of
guitars with 2 cutaways and red, blue or sunburst finish. Maybe mine is exclusive to New Zealand.

This was the first "real" guitar given to me, back in 1980, when I was 11. It had 4 single(?) coils, 4 individual switches, for each pickup, a black/red sunburst finish, 2 piece bridge and tailpiece. Uh, mahogany neck, strat like shape, but the bouts were pointy. Metallic like pickguard. The body may have been mahogany for all I remember. Bolt on neck. The headstock was like a Music Man guitar: 4 on one side, 2 pegs on the right. The nut I remember fell off constantly; it was a weird tremelo trick I used to do, moving the nut from side to side while holding a chord. While strung, nut was secure. But changing strings, nut fell off. Super glue never seemed to keep it on. I think it had 4 separate volume knobs for each pickup; and one master tone? Can't remember. Avg. neck I guess. Frets never were a problem. At the time, I thought it was an awesome thing.

It had a scratchiness to it; the pots were scratchy sounding. Old ones. VERY MICROPHONIC PICKUPS. I could pickup radio stations on it. Anything. Very bright sound. Noisy. I used a fender champ thru it for about six months time. When that was repossessed from me, I had to settle for a homemade amp. THe circuitry from a portable amp was taken, placed in a homemade speaker cab, the size of a practice amp, and a radio shack woofer (12') was placed inside. Worked for the time being.

Never could get the action comfortable. Bridge,neck, adj. never did help. The pickup couldn't be lowered much, so the string action had to be at a certain height. SO, if I wanted to cramp my fingers playing open chords, I had no choice. What I did was play power chords, root and 5th, and dinked around.

This thing was falling apart when I got it!!!!! No way, it wouldn't have held up live. My uncle previously owned it; I guess he played it for his band at weddings, parties, etc...in the 60's...not me. I did play for my 6th grade friends, doing Kiss, Reo Speedwagon half ass stuff, and our drummer, with his floor tom and snare, pounding away. With the bassist on a awful, 60's silver bass with horrible action. We played: "Sure know something", "Take it on the run", "You really got me" VH, "Cat scratch fever" Ted Nugent, and Satisfaction, the stones. Not bad for a bunch of kids back then, huh?

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It was my first electric guitar, afterwards, I bought and redid yard sale electrics, until I got some real gear later on in my life.....

This guitar is extremely old. It was offered way back in the 50's and 60's for about 80 bucks with a 15 watt amp. It has two pickups which are extremely old fasioned. The neck is Mahonogy and has a satin finish. It has a strat style body. The thing I love about it is the black pickguard that has white roses painted into the outside of it. The bridge is very strange which consists of a metal plate on top of the bridge which is connected to a tremelo bar. The bar makes todays bars look like a toothpick. The tuning pegs are a pain in the ass. If you don't have strong have I suggest using pliers to turn them.

I'm like playing all styles of music and like many people say I believe it is the amp and effects that make the sound, not the guitar. I use it with a crate gx120 and a digitech rp-3 with makes it sound pretty good for the guitar it really is. The pickups seems to buzz alot and the plug always pops about a 1/4 inch out of the output hole which buzzes extremely loudly. For a guitar made 40 years ago I'm not gonna give it too much of a hard time but I think I'll plan to get a new more reliable guitar before I gig with this one.

I can't really say how this guitar was setup since I got it when it was 35 years old. I know my dad didn't screw with anything and it still runs ok so it must be ok. Its so old it has a few dings on it but nothing major. The pickups are starting to rust as well. I love the red glossy finish and the nice black pickguard.

This guitar is probably made a hell of a lot more solid that guitars of today. The only reason I wouldn't gig with it is because of the pickup problem. Would anything sound great after 40 years?

40 years and never messed with it.

I have been playing for upwards of 2 years and have not been able to afford a new guitar. I would have never even got into playing if this thing wasnt just standing around so I'm glad It was there. My favorite thing about my teisco is the rose inlays on the pickguard. You don't see companys spending money like that on us nowadays. Hey, no one here is going to be able to buy this guitar but I hope someday a old guy who had one of these as a kid will appreciate my time for filling out this damn survey!

I believe this is a Japanes guitar from the 60s. It has a handle cut into the body. It has an ugly grainy metal pickguard, volume and tone knobs, on-off switches for each pickup (very easy to switch by accident while playing, a switch which cuts all the bass frequencies and about 3/4ths of the power, and a very cool tremolo which splits the difference between Strat and Bigsby (It's a weird fulcrum plate type thing with an adjustible metal bar for a bridge). The body looke like a cross between a Strat and a Firebird. The peghead has 4 crappy pegs on top and 2 on the bottom. It looks very cool in a mid-century Soviet Union kind of way.

It's a cheapo guitar, and the sound quality definitely fluctuates. Through a forgiving amp it has a warm, low output kind of sound, with a good variety. It is not at all quite and the pickups make weird noises when the strings bump into them, which seems to happen all the time. I wouldn't count on a good clean sound consistently coming out of this guitar. It does however sound better through heavy effects like a DOD Thrashmaster or KORG Pandora than any guitar I've played. Better than a Strat or hollowbody Epiphone. Who knows why. I used to get an amazing sound in rehersal playing it through a Thrashmaster and a Marshall Bluesbreaker. I wouldn't want to plug it clean into a twin reverb though.

Action is not as bad as you might expect. It can be adjusted to be fairly low, with only a modicum of buzz, and none of it audible through an amp. The pickups seem to be adjusted too high, although they might be inaudible if they were lowered. The finish is a heinous copper metalic color. All the controls are loose, the nut seems like it was carved by a drunken cave man. Still it plays rather well.

I have tried to play gigs on this guitar with a minimum of success. It's too hard to get a good clean sound on it, the tuners suck, and it's too easy to actually turn off the pickups by accident (very sensitive little rocker switches right above the pickups). It's been holding together for around thirty years though. Some of the hardware is tough, and some of it is pathetic. It's a mixed bag.

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This guitar has been a good practice and songwriting tool for me, and also sounds great through extreme high-gain distortion pedals. The body shape is very pleasing and the tremolo is nice. All in all it's a mixture of things that are so cool you don't understand why no one else has used them since and serious design flaws. I've considered trying to make it more gig-worthy but fear it would detract from some of the inherent coolness. I've had other 60's off-brand guitars, and this seems on par with most of them (fantastic design elements you wish you'd see more places, as well as serious design flaws. I wish some of the people who make modern "retro" guitars would take a closer look at how some of these oddities work instead of designing guitars that seem to be Strats or Les Paul Jr.s designed to look groovy. If you are working on such a guitar, or know of one, please contact me.