Jazzblaster Build/ WRHB questions

[Lost In Autumn]

If my band’s upcoming EP doesn’t become wildly popular this will be our excuse. Our singer’s reissue Starcaster he played on most of the tracks and that’s his main guitar doesn’t even have real ones. Incredibly the guitar still manages to produce a usable sound despite the inauthentic pickups.

obviously, he's not a great player.

I just picked up a guitar with WRHB in the neck position. I’d better not quit my day job.

Even worse, I’m currently building a telecaster that uses a WRHB in the bridge and a gold foil in the neck. Yes, a gold foil, those worthless pickups that were in lousy Japanese beginner guitars in the 60’s. Only rank beginners and nobodies like Ry Cooder, who nobody lists as a great player in their People Magazine best non-hobbyist guitarists of all time polls. Nobody has ever heard of him, he must be worse than that overacted Franz Ferdinand guy, who’s his face?

[Somnospeed]

If my band’s upcoming EP doesn’t become wildly popular this will be our excuse. Our singer’s reissue Starcaster he played on most of the tracks and that’s his main guitar doesn’t even have real ones. Incredibly the guitar still manages to produce a usable sound despite the inauthentic pickups.

obviously, he's not a great player.

I just picked up a guitar with WRHB in the neck position. I’d better not quit my day job.

Is it your only guitar? If not, I rest my case. If it is your only guitar, I noticed you didn't buy a guitar with ONLY WRHB without a single coil. I guess you want more versitility than what the WRHB can deliver, huh? lol

[marqueemoon]

obviously, he's not a great player.

I just picked up a guitar with WRHB in the neck position. I’d better not quit my day job.

Is it your only guitar? If not, I rest my case. If it is your only guitar, I noticed you didn't buy a guitar with ONLY WRHB without a single coil. I guess you want more versitility than what the WRHB can deliver, huh? lol

Not my only guitar. It may or may not be suitable for live band use. If it isn’t that’s ok. For me the gear hobby and the playing hobby are largely separate.

There’s a lot of advantage to generic but good dadrock guitar sounds. If that’s your point then I agree. If I was forced to pick one guitar it would be a Tele with the standard pickups no question.

There really aren’t any rules with this stuff though. Compelling music can be made with just about anything.

[øøøøøøø]

hobbyist
noun a person who pursues an activity in their spare time for pleasure.

I fail to see how that word choice is inaccurate or illogical.

In my case it's the "spare time" part that doesn't really apply. "For pleasure" is, happily, more and more true all the time!

For what it's worth, I feel like I can do anything on a WRHB-equipped Tele Thinline. I had a second one built to clone my first so I could always have one (it sometimes makes sense to leave one with the tour while I'm off doing other things).

Actually I kinda have three... the third one is a reissue that's sort of "on loan" from Fender and stays with the tour as my backup. It has the earlier "not-really-WRHB" pickups, and so doesn't do entirely the same thing... but it's solid as a backup, and a great instrument for its price point.

Thanks to a great touring tech and the rock-solid simplicity of a Thinline, I've yet to press it into service!

[Somnospeed]

hobbyist
noun a person who pursues an activity in their spare time for pleasure.

I fail to see how that word choice is inaccurate or illogical.

In my case it's the "spare time" part that doesn't really apply. "For pleasure" is, happily, more and more true all the time!

For what it's worth, I feel like I can do anything on a WRHB-equipped Tele Thinline. I had a second one built to clone my first so I could always have one (it sometimes makes sense to leave one with the tour while I'm off doing other things).

Actually I kinda have three... the third one is a reissue that's sort of "on loan" from Fender and stays with the tour as my backup. It has the earlier "not-really-WRHB" pickups, and so doesn't do entirely the same thing... but it's solid as a backup, and a great instrument for its price point.

Thanks to a great touring tech and the rock-solid simplicity of a Thinline, I've yet to press it into service!

Good stuff. I wish I could feel that way about any of my guitars. I have some that I love and never want to put down, but I find myself reaching for the guitar which sounds closest to the tone I want to match whatever music I'm digging at the moment. When I'm "chasing tones", the WRHB just isn't versatile enough for me and the style of music I play, write, and listen to. If I had to label one of my guitars my "Do it all" guitar, I would pick the new Tele Deluxe Professional II (or whatever the official name is.) I really do feel that is the most versatile guitar I've ever owned. And if I could design my own guitar 100% to my liking, I would shape it exactly the same as my modern Tele Deluxe. It's only flaw? Fender needs to fit a WRHB in it somewhere in the mix!

I was just watching a movie and Kim Gordon popped up as one of the headline actors. The bass player from Sonic Youth now sits next to Joaquin Phoenix and Jonah Hill instead of Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo.
I'll take that as a sign from the noise rock gods... gotta run and play my Jazzblaster POST HASTE!! (It's already in FFDDFF tuning.)

Oh I forgot to add... I totally agree about the Vintera re-issue Tele Deluxes. If I wasn't able to get the genuine cunife models, I would definitely have a couple of the older reissues, especially the current non-cunife WRHB in the 72 Deluxe Reissue. (The new Tele Custom has a genuine cunife WRHB in the neck, in case anyone was unaware.) Those reissues sound outstanding and do have a distinct tone of their own. At least it seemed so in the 5 minutes I got to spend playing one. lol

[Brock the Mod]

Okay now Im offended

[46346]

poor Brock!

late to the party, but Somnospeed makes an interesting point how WRHB's went so long without being part of a genre.
like how Fender could never succeed with a jazz guitar... and WRHB's were part of that legacy too!

in the whole two decades from when i started considering how to play guitar (1981)
to the time i started getting more broadly experimental gigs with any gear i wanted to use (2000)
those WRHB's were almost obsolete. certainly out of production and i don't know of
anyone who was copying them. that's a really long absence from the guitar scene!

eventually i noticed that SY had some, but their sounds were so often 'outside' or noisy,
that the character of the pup was not very discernible. later, when they started
playing those clean arpeggios, i definitely took notice.

it was Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead (i don't remember Thom using them) who i would see live quite a lot who really got me
into the WRHB's sound, especially as his cleaner, somewhat smoky/woody tone. he truly is a "guitar great".
he got me into the Starcaster, which i never really knew about during the 80's and 90's either.
his approach was to let the WRHB's character to ring clearly and sustain in it's unadulterated glory.
it was Kid A / Amnesiac tour that i noticed it.

so yeah, it's not of the eternal classic rock or jazz domain. but finally found a significant voice in experimental and indie rock
of this century. very cool!

dawn of this century was when i sought out my first WRHB, eventually found in a '74 Tele Custom, that was a real bargain then.
Nels turned me on to the Jazzmaster, which eventually became my #1.
but when i wanted to try a Jazzblaster, i only had nice original bodies at hand, so i went with Novak's WR-JM
to avoid any nasty routing.

Like Brad mentioned earlier about all the great options, the Novaks were a really good enough option! later i checked out Lollar and Creamery, and they were great too! not exactly a match to my original Tele, but very much in the ballpark, and they look great. all of good quality and inspiring.

Brock, if you're still deciding, i would say try whatever you can find locally, and hear them in person.
that way you know your not really gambling with what you get. cuz like Brad said, all of the current options are quite good.

[Brock the Mod]

With this custom body (from MJT) I actually went with deeper routing but no upper horn routing for the rhythm circuit. So Im committed to doing the traditional big size chrome ones.

Creamery also has the Travis Bean WRHB ones that just kinda caught my eye. No experience with TB guitars but is there a big difference?

[Somnospeed]

Thom used WRHB in the studio and on tour. I saw Radiohead twice in 93 and once in 95 or 96, I can't remember. Thom had a 70's Tele Deluxe in his rotation on the 95 (maybe 96?) tour. I've only really seen Johnny play his trademark Tele but obviously there's a lot I haven't seen.

Here's a rundown which shows the Tele Deluxe and Tele Custom, which was modified to WRHB/HB combo. I had seen this guitar before but didn't know it was a WRHB/HB combo. I thought it was a Tele Deluxe. Pretty good idea, actually. I don't recall seeing one of those before. I'm seriously considering modifying a Tele Custom with that combo myself.

https://thekingofgear.com/thom/guitars

[Brock the Mod]

I think most of Kid A and Amnesiac are recorded with his Starblaster.

[JSett]

Thom Yorke I've always associated with his Black Jazzmaster (1995-present maybe?), an SG and a Rick 330. I'm not even much of a Radiohead fan but I've seen them live maybe 10 times in the last 25 years. Early days I remember him using some kinda regular black Telecaster and SGs, then I remember the JM/330/SG stuff.

I've definitely seen him use a Tele Custom with WRHBs at some point (probably the OK Computer era) but I wouldn't associate him, or his sound, with them as a rule.

[Somnospeed]

Other than Lee Ranaldo, I personally wouldn't associate any guitar player with WRHB lol. But yeah, I don't associate Thom York with anything but Radiohead. I didn't know he had a "sound" of his own. lol