Monthly Archives: March 2021

The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.

#comparingyourcalluseswithotherguitarists
#guitaristthings

Real creamy one.

Like a lot of Asian kids growing up I had piano lessons (well, in my case, organ lessons!). I wasn’t into the keyboard so the lessons soon stopped. In high school my mate Spiro, a KISS obsessed fan, let me have a go of his electric guitar. When he handed it to me I instantly turned it upside down (I’m left-handed). He taught me how to play the main riff of “I was made for lovin’ you” and from there I was hooked.

I had decided I wanted to get an electric guitar and my parents were so super encouraging, they took me to Sunburst Music in Coogee Beach (they’re still there!) to buy my first guitar. Like most guitar shops, there were so many amazing guitars on show but there were so few left-handed guitars, in fact, only 2. Both lefties were second hand, one was a metal shredder (I don’t even remember what brand it was) and the other was a Stratocaster copy. The whammy bar, the humbuckers, the locking Floyd Rose style trem… I had to have the shredder!

But alas the shop guy was really trying to convince me to buy the Strat which was a sunburst Japanese made Tokai which he thought was the better guitar. I couldn’t play, so he plugged the Tokai in and played some stuff which I remember thinking was soft rock crap (hey all I wanted to do was play metal!), but in retrospect I now know he had that amp cranked up, did some amazing bends, blues licks and had amazing clean tone. How I hugely regret not buying that lefty Tokai Strat even to this day.

Fast forward to 1997 I bought this lefty Squier Stratocaster. Up until that time I’d only owned heavy metal shredder type guitars with buzzing low strong action, fast thin necks and Floyd Rose tremolo systems so this guitar was a massive departure from all my other gats. I found the creamy vintage blonde finish so offensively ugly that I loved it. The guitar feels funky. When I play it I play funky stuff. I also almost always play it clean (I’ve never used my beloved BOSS Metal Zone pedal since). I’ve tried to buy a few metal shredders since buying this Strat but I’ve never ever been able to go back. This Strat has well and truly killed metal for me and not until recently have I started to really understand why.

In doing some research on the current Fender range of guitars I came to realise that this Strat of mine is something quite special. The guitar was made in Korea (the current Squires are made in China) and rumour has it that the build quality on the Pro Tone series was so good that Fender discontinued them because they were cutting into the American sales. With the specs on this guitar I’d say it’s more in line with Fenders current Player Mexican made series of Strats (and much more sought after and desirable now too). I’ve since found out that it’s got a much thinner neck than most Fender Strats, even thinner than a Modern C which is one of the most common neck profiles on current Fender Strats, and that really explains why I love playing it so much. Sure, the neck isn’t as fast and thin as say the neck on my Jackson King V, but it’s damn close and the fact that it’s thinner and/or different than the necks on all current American Fender Strats makes me very nervous about buying a new Strat without first playing one.

I recently bought an Artist Telecaster style guitar and it’s been the wake-up call I think I really needed. The Telecaster body is super heavy, it’s basically a block of wood whereas the Stratocaster body is super light and it’s an ergonomic wonder with a huge cutaway on the back for you hip and a cutaway on the front for your strumming hand. Swapping between the Tele neck and Strat neck is thick to thin, the difference is light and day.

The Strat fits me. I like wearing it.

The plan was always to one day go all in on an American made Fender Stratocaster. It still is, but for now I’ve decided to put a bit of TLC into my Korean made Fender Squier. My intention isn’t to fully restore the guitar, nor is it to do anything to it that I can’t undo. I just want to give the guitar a bit more life and reliability with the intention of playing it more and keeping it as a forever guitar.

Current Specifications:
Series: Squier Pro Tone Series
Body: 2 piece Solid Ash
Neck: One piece Maple
Width at Nut: 42 mm
Pickups: 3 Alnico Single Coils
Color: See Through Vintage Blonde
Country Of Origin: Korea

Rust In Peace. Everything is working but the volume and tone knobs are annoyingly scratchy and noisy. I’ll try cleaning them but I tend to leave them both on 10 in any case!

I have a thing for red guitar picks?

The headstock has aged the most for some reason. Not sure I want to risk damaging the logos with any sanding so I might just clean it up as best I can without using anything too abrasive.

The little nylon washers on the tuning heads are cracking (one is missing altogether).

Crafted in Korea, the first number in the serial suggests it was made in 1997.

This guitar came with a satin finished neck which is all the rage these days. Painted necks tend to get grabby and sticky whereas a satin finished neck stays fast and smooth.

Real scars unlike relic guitars which are made to look worn even though they’re brand new.

See that long “crease”? The paint (or glue?!) has moved over the years and you can now quite easily tell that it’s a 2-piece body.

It’s really subtle but you can see the wood grain through the paint which I think is super nice.

These die-cast tuners were a lot heavier than I thought they would be. The guitar can’t keep tune, most likely due to the really rusty and grabby string tree but I’ll be replacing them with locking tuners in any case.

The vintage bridge saddles were really rusty, so rusty I had no idea FENDER was stamped in each one.

I thought about polishing the original saddles but instead bought some new genuine made in USA vintage saddles which I found on eBay.

My coffee table is now my work bench!

More updates as new parts come in!

Artist TC59.

In high school I got into playing the guitar and in year 12 I made a custom left-handed Telecaster for my Industrial Tech major project. From a distance it looked OK, but both played and sounded like absolute crap. When I was in uni I was in a 3 piece rock band, we gigged around Sydney, won the Bowlow at Broadway band comp and got to the semi-finals of the Sydney Uni band comp, but I came to the realisation that I might never make it as a rock star, so I decided to call it quits. In 1997 I had well and truly hung up my metal shredders and bought myself a Korean made Pro Tone Fender Squier Stratocaster in vintage blonde, a colourway so offensively ugly to me at the time which was exactly why I had to have it.

I’ve bought a fair few more guitars since the late 90’s but I’ve not played any guitar more than the Strat (so I suppose that makes me a strat guy!). For many years now my master plan has been to buy myself an American made lefty Strat, but alas I have a problem with impulse buying $500 lefty guitars on eBay (got to try them all!). There’s absolutely no doubt that if I hadn’t bought all these cheap guitars over the years I would have been able to afford my dream guitar by now, but hey, it is what it is!

So fast forward to now; I have newfound motivation and I’m determined to become a better guitar player. I’m realising that I’ve spent years playing the same things, over and over, solidifying bad habits and generally jamming lots, but not practising at all. I have lots to undo, but I’ve been on it, building up my calluses, learning scales, playing with alternative tunings and watching a whole lot of guitar content on YouTube, and that’s what led me to this guitar purchase.

I’ve been watching tutorial vids, and also jamming to blues backing tracks, but in my downtime (when my fingers hurt too much to play) I’ve been watching gear reviews. Initially I was watching reviews on top end gear, but that nasty algorithm started feeding me videos on how to upgrade my Squier, then it got me onto watching pro guitarists playing on cheap guitars, then onto YouTubers reviewing cheap sub $100US guitars.

Trust no one.

I come from a marketing background so I have a sixth sense when it comes to advertising. It’s black and white to me when a content creator is being sponsored by a company, but I found a few good reviews on cheap guitars by “Artist Guitars“, an Australian company that makes their guitars in China. They make a Gibson Les Paul copy, a guitar I’ve always wanted to own as I’m a huge Slash fan, an SG, also a guitar I’ve always wanted to own, and then there it was, a Telecaster copy for $289 AUD ($279 if you’re not a lefty, ah gotta love that lefty tax!). I thought about it for a while, but you know, one of those late nights I must have hit the buy now button, and well, 2 days after the online purchase the guitar was at my doorstep.

First impressions: The guitar came in a cardboard box with what seemed like very little protection, inside the box the guitar was in a plastic bag tied up with an elastic band. I started to feel a little less confident in my purchase when I started ripping at the sticky tape that held the tissue paper over the strings. The thought of this guitar coming all the way from China in this flimsy cardboard box had me in all sorts of doubt.

The first thing I did was put my nail to the Artist logo on the headstock. To my surprise the letters started moving. Yes, the sticker is under the clear coat, but the clear coat is so thin that you can remove the sticker. Crazy!

The guitar comes with locking nuts which are totally new to me (I’ve never had them on any of my guitars). The nuts were very loose and the guitar was nowhere near in tune. On tuning it up one string gave way at the locking nut, annoying but a better sign than say a string snapping at the nut, or bridge.

The next thing I noticed was that both knobs do not spin straight. IE: When you turn the volume or tone knobs, the gap between the bottom of the knob and the guitar body change as you turn them. Can’t say I’ve ever owned a guitar which has this issue. It’s a pretty massive turn off for sure.

This guitar is hands down the heaviest guitar I’ve ever owned and also super uncomfortable, not Artist’s fault here as traditional Telecasters are essentially slabs of wood whereas the Strat has a huge ergonomic cutout for your hip.

You get what you pay for?

Acoustically the guitar is louder and has more sustain than all the rest of the electric guitars in my collection. The guitar holds tune really well too. The action is quite nice (lower than my Strat) but the neck feels way thicker than the neck on my Strat (a Pro Tone made in Korea model which apparently has one of the thinnest necks of all Fender Squire srtats), or any other electric guitar I currently own. When I switch between the Strat and the TC59 and play the same tunes I just feel so much faster on the Strat and ultimately more comfortable and more at home.

But it’s not all bad! I’ve got my Strat permanently tuned down to E Flat and I’m loving the change (makes bending strings even easier). I run 9 gauge strings on all my electric guitars but I’m pretty sure the Artist comes with 10 gage strings. I’m going to leave them on and use the guitar as my training rig. Learning how to play clean and fast on the TC59 will help me play faster on my Strat. Bending heavier strings on the TC59 will make bending on my Strat a breeze and since the guitar is so damn heavy I’ll leave it permanently strapless in my bedroom for tutorial videos on the laptop.

Who knows, maybe I’ll like the guitar the more I play it, but even if I don’t I’ve at least confirmed a few things; that I value quality and craftsmanship (it’s the little things). I’m still a sucker for brand names (I see Fenders and Gibsons in my hopefully not too distant future guitar collection!) and that I most likely will never buy a guitar without playing it first ever again.

Kick out the jams.