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Old 01-06-2009, 09:05 AM   #156 (permalink)
GuitarBizarre
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Originally Posted by RezZ View Post
This might be stupid, because I have never seen anyone do it but I will ask anyways.

I recently found a used Gibson ES-335 (which is my favorite guitar) and have been wondering how a American Telecaster standard neck would work on it. I love the feel of the fretboard and the tuning knobs but would really like to try the semi-hollow body on it.

Do you think it may work or sound remotely good?


Can't be done without extensive woodworking I'm afraid. The necks have to be steamed out of the guitar, a new neck made to fit, and if they're not exactly the same fit you may still have problems.

Even without a neck replacement, you could do it only with considerable expense. You'd need to pull the frets, re-radius the board to match the tele, re-contour the neck, replace the tuners, and then have new frets put in.


Also, the gibson bridges are factory set to a 14" radius that can't be changed. The telecaster necks have a much smaller radius so they're more curved. You'll end up with terrible setup issues unless you buy a new set of saddles and file the grooves down to the correct heights for each string. Given how curved fender fretboards normally are, I'm not even sure if the saddles will have enough material above the screws to file down to match the radius. You may well end up with one groove filed down right to the scren underneath in the attempts, and thats not good for stability at all.

My advice? For the price of that gibson (I'm assuming its a few hundred) you could get a custom body made by any number of custom luthiers. It'll be a few months wait, but it'll be much better quality anyway and will be EXACTLY what you want as long as you're clear on the specifications to who-ever is building it.

I'm not sure if they do hollow bodies, but ET Guitars and Jaden Rose customs will build at least a heavily chambered solid body for you, if not the exact body you want. Jaden isn't taking new orders right now so you'll be waiting a little, I believe ET still has slots available.

As a last word of advice, NEVER buy anything from Christopher Woods guitars, or Legacy One guitars. Its well documented that legacy is a fraudster, and that Chris woods is probably a fraudster, if not just incredibly unreliable. (ALthough Woods does some undeniably fine work, I know for a fact that the guy at the very top of his waiting list, has been waiting over a year for something he ordered from him, and is having extreme difficulty getting any contact at all from him)
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