Teisco E-110 Tulip

One single coil pickup, volume pot, tone pot, and a truss rod. That's what you get. Not even intonation. You're lucky it's got tuners.

First of all, I use flatwound D'Addario Chromes strings (.013"-.056"), and tune CGCFAA#, which is like Drop-C except for the A#. The neck is very thin, and would not be able to handle those strings except for how low I tune and the fact that I had the nut replaced.

The stock tone with a standard tuning is great. Seriously though, a little blues-style Class A distortion and it's like Hendrix playing with The Ventures. But I play weird super-heavy droned out post-rock stuff (think Isis crossed with Sonic Youth crossed with Lou Reed) and I needed a wider range from it (read: more low end), so I routed the body and added a GFS Loud Mouth humbucker in a pseudo-bridge position and hot-rodded it with the stock pick up. Then I wired the pickups through a reverse tone pot (i.e. a passive low-pass filter, as opposed to standard passive high-pass filter), and then volume pot and out.

I play through a DigiTech bass-driver, into either a Behringer Ultrabass BXL900 90W 1x12" Bass Combo for practice and small gigs, or a 150W Acoustic Research solid-state head into a PAS 2x18" bass cabinet for large gigs.

Undistorted it plays like a shortscale bass or Baritone. But you can pull giant beefy balls out of it as well with a little crunch, and it'll start to sound like Tony Iommi's Neurosis coverband. A lot of that's the GFS pickup, but that stock Teisco pup adds a great greasy twang on top, especially with the high notes: even through the bass effects and amps, they can get sweet and glassy because of that pup.

It also sustains pretty well despite weighing less than most Tele NECKS!

The biggest gripe with the sound is the lack of intonation. Sometimes it gets a little rough. I play a lot of chords containing open strings, and sometimes there's a harshness there because the intonation is slightly off. But, for a grand total of $200 including pro set up, you can't go wrong.

Good: Thin fast neck, jumbo frets, pretty low action achievable with no fret-work, light as a feather. Nice finish on the sunburst after all these years. The chrome is still in pretty good shape too.

Bad: Tuners are a little sticky. Not terribly well balanced because the body is so small. There's nowhere to put the strap buttons to make it better than it currently is or I'd have fixed that already. Once you get used to it though, it's no big deal, especially as light as it is over all.

I play live with it all the time and beat the crap out of it. None of the hardware will ever fail. It breaks strings a little more than I would like, and the jack has a tendency to come loose because it's mounted to a metal plate so the nuts can't bit into it. Other than that and the aforementioned sticky tuner issue, it's rock friggin' solid.

As if.

I love this thing. I realize I've customized it to such an extent that my review will seem useless to most of you.

However, I would like to point out that this guitar can take it. It's a beautiful canvas, so beautiful that it's perfectly fine to leave as is, but equally fine to layer in paint. I've been recently been looking at buying a couple more, and turning one into a hopped up blues machine, and leaving the other as is.

At this point the only thing it's missing is intonation. One of these days I'll just plunk down the 50 bucks for a new bridge.

This circa '69 Japanese Import sports 22 frets, a super thin body of an unknown wood and a kinda neat looking, and very decent output single coil pick up. Just one, however, with a corresponding set of tone and volume knobs.

The neck looks like alder with a rosewood fretboard. The body is kind of a mutated strat with the top horn ending in almost a square and the bottom sweeping down to a small point. It has a sunburst finish, and a overly decorated black pickgaurd with a cheesy climbing flower engraving.

The bridge is one I have only ever seen on Silvertone guitars,which Teisco made, after Danelectro moved on to their own production line. It consists of a wooden bridge, which is pretty chipped up, and a metal sort of cover/string hook.

The tuners are six-in-line, but have that lame acoustic backing, and plastic knobs. It apears that the person who last owned this guitar never washed their hands, because the plastic was once white, but now has a distinct brown tinge to it.

The neck is nice and thin with worn flat frets of a moderate size. Since I bought this guitar at a pawn shop, I expected all the small nicks and dinks and worn frets.

This guitar was really made for twangy finger picking. The action sits nearly an inch from the body and the pick up has a great vintage twang to it. Since I mostly play harder rock, this doesn't really suit me, but I don't care since the guitar looks so terribly great. And by that I mean, it looks terrible, and thats what I wanted.

It really isn't noisy, although the pots could use a cleaning, but I hardly ever touch the tone or volume. The variety of sounds is pretty limited. With the distortion off, its a pretty run of the mill finger picker/flamenco twanger, with distortion on, it makes some pretty neat jangly indie rock power chords.

The action, as I said earlier, sits like Everest among the Himilayas: Pretty freaking tall. And I have it down at the lowest it will go!

The pickups seem to be in great condition, and nothing jostles when I shake the guitar. This is either because the person who owned it before me gave it some nice TLC, or because Teisco makes a nice guitar.

My one complaint is that the truss rod adjustment peice sticks out below the neck, and looks to be a little cock-eyed. And the wooden bridge has taken some abuse. I'd definately replace it, if I could find the correct parts.

If you were to play this guitar live, I think it'd last you the duration of a tour. The hardware would definately suffer, and needs some shining up.

One downfall of this guitar is that the body is extremely skinny and the headstock is really large. So the guitar tends to try and droop on you, and drags the neck down from your hand. While it is nice, since the guitar is light as air, it makes it a little difficult for big guitar jumps and sweet Townsendesqu wind mills.

It is, however, a tough little bugger, and I would trust it to hold up for a concert.

But, since I would only use it for particular songs, ones where I don't need a big, bonecrunching humbucker sound, I'd definately bring a back up.

I don't think Teisco exists anymore.

I've been playing for 10 years, since I was 12. I still own the first guitar I ever bought, and I love purchasing used guitars, which I keep in various stages of working order. I have never had the guts to take the teisco apart, since it is so vintage, but maybe someday it will suffer my wrath, and be updated with a Humbucker or a Hotrail.

If I were to lose it, I think I would have an extremely difficult time replacing it, and given the amount of guitars that I own, it would hardly make sense to do so.

What I love about this guitar is how cheesy it looks and how light it feels. My biggest complaint is the lack of aggresive tone.

I looked this up on http://www.teiscotwangers.com/ and it seems to be the E-110 model. One pickup, volume and tone knob. A basic starter guitar.

The sound was terrible when I got it, the output jack was wired backwards and the pots were dirty, I fixed those problems, now the only sound related problem is that the pickup is quite microphonic, I can talk loudly into the pickup and have it come out of the amp! I think if I fill the thing with wax it might take care of that to some extent. The sound of the guitar is kinda... um... twangy... full range but kind of hollow. It would probably sound a lot better with a new pickup.

Ha!!!... this guitar was given to me with one tuner left on the all-in-one-row tuner plate, the jack was hanging out, there was no bridge saddle and there was dirt all over the guitar. I think someone was using it to shovel manure or something. I took off the tuner plate and installed a new set of enclosed tuners, rewired the jack, cleaned the pots, installed a new compensated saddle/bridge , a set of strings and plugged it in and amazingly it played perfectly in tune and with pretty nice action without any changes to the neck, I got to say that is one wild neck with like a hundred layers of centimeter wide strips glued together. The flowery pickgaurd is pretty warped and bits missing here and there but I managed to get it under control with a new set of screws.

I haven't tryed to play this live yet, I just managed to get it together a week or so ago. This is a beat-around guitar, I think it will take a lot of abuse, as it obviously has for many years now already. This guitar does not have enough sounds to use as a main guitar (only one pickup)

I support myself and my instruments, if I cant get it to work myself, I turn it into some kind of frankenstein instrument...

This is a fun little guitar that is perfectly usable, considering the price (free) and the cost of repair parts ($21)
I collect old junky instruments and make something freaky out of them.... the fact that I have actually restored this one at least says to me that it is pretty unique.
I wish it had another pickup... or basically two new pickups and a selector switch... maybe I will modify it...

I believe this is a 1966 or 67,notwithstanding the Teisco Twanger site that identified it as a 69.Mine is a dark semi-metallic blue with the over-flowered pickguard,one chrome pickup.I discovered while re-setting the neck the body is some sort of japaneese particle board.The neck is nice and straight,a lamination from maple plywood heaven,its pretty flat though,and wider than modern Strat configurations.At first I thought the frets were worn out,but upon closer inspection they look like bar frets,flat,low,and bronze.The rosewood fingerboard came back to life with lemon oil fretboard conditioner,nice quality,pretty slick after cleaning with meguires paint cleaner.The tuners were corroded cheese,with melted looking buttons(probably leaned on a woodstove at one time)3in1 oil and 400 grit sandpaper brought them back to life.They actually work well.

I home record acoustic and electric junk through a vintage Crate amp for my keyboard,a small 15 watt Marshall Mg15dfx running a homemade Leslie for guitar and vocals.When I brought this thing home from a thrift store,the neck was cocked sideways,the pots were loose and rattling around,the pickup the same.All the chrome parts were corroded,and it was missing the strap buttons.I jerked everything out and off and began cleaning.The thing was noisy as hell plugged in,I could ground it by touching the pickup and strings while resting my hand on the bridge plate.Looking inside I found a yellow wire running from the two pots that needed soldering.I also ran a simple ground wire from the bottom screw that held the pickup on to the ground side of the jack.Instant success!The thing actually plays smooth and quiet now.The sound is pure 60's,reminds me of an old Ventures recording played with reverb clean.I intended to use this thing as a body to build on,Put a single p-90 soapbar pickup and all new wiring,new Gotoh tuners,and a refret job.I have changed my mind,there is enough junk project bodies on e-bay for that sort of thing.This thing is a relic,and a fast appreciating one at that.Two months ago you could get a Teisco Del Ray for 40 dollars on E-bay,but no more.Seems everyones insatiable appetite for all things 60's has caught up with Teisco.All the ones on e-bay recently were lacking the cool Del Ray headstock logo plate,they were selling the plate separately for 30 bucks.The average price for a complete guitar was 150 dollars.Teisco seems to be hot right now.The sound of this guitar is one sound,unless you play with it at the amp,the tone control adds little.I plan to shield the pickup cavity with some cool copper tape I got from Stewart Macdonald to further quiet it down,nothing else is needed.

The neck was cocked at an angle and loose,I removed it and discovered drilling debris was cocking it and one screw hole wasn't deep enough.After cleaning the cavity the neck seated tight!What a wonderful feeling,it's fun fixing old junk with success!After I discovered the cure for the grounding problem I couldn't wait to string it up and jam(D'arrio Light)I polished the pot metal bridge with 400 grit and waxed it heavily,especially in the grooves to prevent string breakage(there were multiple "Phantom grooves).You adjust two thumbwheels to raise or lower the action,just get the right height over the non-adjustable pickup.I must have the Lords blessing,everything on this axe was flopping around and corroded when I got it,now,after a little elbow grease,solder,and 6 bucks for strings,I wouldn't take 300 bucks for this thing.When I need a 60's tone for a recording,I just take this thing down and plug it in.The action is actually good!The near flat fingerboard takes a little getting used to,but I have big hands.Of course there are intonation problems around the 11 or 12 fret,this guitar has a zero fret with grooves eat into it and a junk metal saddle.Thats why I am so amazed the thing plays and sounds so well.I measured the neck while I had it off,no need to play with the trussrod,good relief after 40 years!Unbelievable!The finish is thick as hell and cleaned up bright with 3 step Meguires,do it while everything is off for cleaning.

My brother Don learned on a guitar very much like this one in 1964,it was a Telestar.I would love to find another one.The problem in the 60's was amps,not guitars like this one.No one could afford a good amp back then.This Teisco sounds close to my modern Strat through a good amp,the department store amps in the 60's sucked hard.Anyone can work on a guitar like this,simple electronics,bridge,I agree with an earlier post,Keep it simple,stupid.This guitar is built from good solid stuff,yet weighs hardly anything.I used longer screws and superglue to replace the stripped out strap hangers,no problemo.I am frigging amazed I brought this pos home and spent 4 hours on it and it playe as well as it does,40 years later dude!The Asians had it together back then,and now,with 99 percent of musical instruments being produced in that neighborhood,its proof they have only refined the process of ripping off American manufacturers like Fender and Gibson.

I called Tohikuru Matsushita at Teisco and he was most helpful in resolving my warranty issues.My replacement pots and top bridge pc. was shipped out from Japan in a timely manner.We both had a good time reminicing over the heydays of the 60's,when his Mother assembled necks at the Teisco factory while barefooted with him and his sisters playing nearby in the wood scrap pile.He told me if I ever want to sell my E-100 to let him know,they command high prices in Japan these days,especially with the American badging and logo.

I've been in garage bands since 1977.We had a few promising hits but the lyrics and nature of the songs disturbed me so I let them go.I could be a millionaire if I didn't listen to the Lords guidance.I recently got back into music,I purchased a 89 dollar Baja solidbody from music 123,a 15 watt Marshall amp,I built a Leslie cabinet from Organ guts from E-bay Canada,took a Crate Cr-285b15 in lieu of child support from my ex-wife,took over my childs radio shack keyboard,bought a Tascam Porta-2,a Shure P-37 microphone,3 Radio shack mics,a 40 dollar Cort flatop off e-bay(best money I've ever spent)rigged up a dump-rescued Yamaha Natural Sound amp with an 89 dollar Sony cassette and polk audio bookshelf speakers for my monitor(these little Polk speakers smoke,nothing but praise)Oh yeah,I'm restoring my Brother Dons' first guitar,a 1963 Hoyer flatop,into a clone of a Gibson J-160e.
I chose this guitar because its old,and funky,and the price was right.No one will steal my stuff,the Lord will look out for me,he always has.

This is that P.O.S. that says Teisco Department Store. I bought it with a Teisco solid-state amp that, when set side by side, said "Merry Christmas, 1966." Junior's first guitar and amp. The cheapest ones your parents could buy, hoping the fascination would wear off.
The body is a half-inch thick slab of wood (probably mahogany, ironically enough) in a tulip shape, with a cheesy sunburst pattern that is actually fading to green around the edges. It has a warping, cheap black plastic pickguard with a white floral etching pattern (more like weeds, actually) around the edges. It looks what happens when the Gibson "Hummingbird" designer is given too much coffee and just one pickguard to practice on.
There is also a Teisco ET-100 (the "T" indicates a tremelo bar. No such luxury here). There are also E-100s and E-110s and various manifestations that have metal pickguards and a different shape.
There is one pickup. Lord knows what's inside, but it is chrome with six holes and a couple slits that show black paper beneath. It conveniently screws directly onto the body with a couple Phillips screws. It's got a volume and tone knob, both of which work quietly and well (actually, the tone knob doesn't do a lot. I never touch it. But at least it's not wired backwards like some Teiscos.). The volume knob was missing so I replaced it with an old TV channel changer, which suits the guitar just fine.
I'd like to see how they made these necks. This one is straight and plays well. I appears to be a slice cut of some piece of 1000-ply blonde wood (maple?).
The tuners are just a strip of six open gears with white plastic keys.
The bridge is a little piece of notched chromed metal that sits on two exposed screws on another piece of chrome. The strings fit neatly into the tailpiece, which is just another single piece of chrome with six cuts to catch the string balls.
The nut is hard white plastic, and there is a "zero fret", whatever that means. All these old Teiscos seem to have them. The nut is kind of sloppy but works. Probably an easy repair. Seems to stay in tune well enough. The tuners are so tight, they pretty much lock you into tune when you finally get there.

If you've got different amps and pedals, and your good guitar is cased up, you can always reach for your light-as-a-feather Teisco E-110 for a quick check.
I use this guitar on a Park G10R amp, basically a small Marshall. I also run it through a 6-amp tube amp and whatever else.
You've got one single-coil pickup and a volume knob, pretty much. After that it's up to you to play around with the gain and reverb (which are naturally the best effects for this guitar). The sound you get is pretty much a smooth twang, not as loud as a modern guitar, but if you turn it up and play, and someone in the next room hears it, they'll be pretty damn surprised to come in and see a little flowery tulip thing in your lap. The guitar, I mean.
You can get some good feedback out of it, and you can get some nice old-sounding blues. And you can get twang. You can get pretty much a dead on "Folsom Prison Blues" sound. I guess that was a Telecaster, but there you go.
You are NOT going to get a lot of sophisticated jazz sounds, and the sustain isn't as good as most guitars (it's still good), but I've had more expensive guitars that sounded worse than this one.
The guitar buzzes less than a good Strat copy I had. Under the hood there is just a pickup, two wires and two pots. Nothing to get in the way, I guess.

This is a 1960s Teisco, so you get what you get. Model numbers and brand names flying all over the place, the same guitar with a dozen different names, similar guitars with different necks, identical guitars with a different pickup. That's what makes them fun.

This guitar is older than me and is still holding together. There's nothing to go wrong, really.
I am not a pro, so I don't know about gigs and backups, but I would probably advise against showing up at a gig with this thing except for a novelty number. It would probably hold up well enough, but if an electric guitar is a phallic symbol, you sure don't want to be on stage with a 3-pound guitar that barely covers your belt buckle.

Somewhere in Japan, there are men (and probably women, judging by the flower designs) who put together many, many exotic and eccentric guitars in the 1960s. I'd like to see someone track some of them down. Otherwise, you can get parts now and again on eBay or, if you dare, replace stuff with modern pieces.
The thing about modern guitar parts is they're just too sophisticated. Go down to the shop and try to buy a bridge made of two screw posts and two pieces of notched metal for the strings to ride on. I know they suck compared to a tune-o-matic, but they ought still to be available.

I've been banging around for nearly 15 years, as a hobby or therapy or what have you.
I own or have owned all sorts of 1960s Japanese guitars, a couple Danelectros, Jay Turser strats, and such. Nothing "top of the line" ever.
No one's gonna steal this guitar.