Tiesco Refresh

[threewordname]

so i found this guitar a couple years ago, it was on the curb down the street from me, about to be thrown out with the trash. I tried to get it playing, but in order to get it to intonate i had to jack the bridge way up, and the action was terrible. Its been sitting around collecting dust ever since. I was wondering if anyone can get me an ID. Its a short scale, i think 23" and a plywood body. I was thinking about doing something strange with it as far as mods, but id like to know what i have on my hands before i start hacking it up.

[PaulDesmondTutu]

My guess it's Teisco Del Ray of some sort. What are your plans for mods?

[jthomas]

It may be a Kimberly, which was a brand reported to have been manufactured by Teisco. My first guitar was a Kimberly ($29.99 from Lafayette Radio Electronics in 1966 or 1967, I think, thanks Mom and Dad). I would have been 13 or 14. It had a very similar bridge, the relatively large headstock that your guitar has, a metal mirror finish pickguard, and a string retainer above the nut with that shape. Mine was shaped like a Strat. The pickups on my guitar had the same shape, but also had a plastic top insert. It had horrible action and was almost impossible to play. I tried to post an old picture here, but OSG does not make that easy. If the forum has any lasting interest in the topic I will explore getting a picture up.

Uhhh... maybe like this:

Nope. If anybody can suggest the best way to submit a post, I'd appreciate it.

[noisepunk]

It's japanese, made by teisco in the 60's, probably rebranded by a smaller department store to any number of names. If you shim the neck, unscrew the bridge and move it to where it will intonate, and stick in a decent set of tuners, this could be a pretty awesome garage-rock/punk guitar; those old japanese pickups don't typically sound especially good clean, but they tend to take fuzz better than almost anything else.

[timx1386]

Dang, nice find! I'll have to keep an eye on the trash more often!

Actually over the summer I picked up an old Premier tube amp head that was in the trash. Sounds fantastic! Its so easy to post on craigslist or ebay i don't get why people will just toss stuff like that out..

Keep us posted on how it comes out!

[threewordname]

My guess it's Teisco Del Ray of some sort. What are your plans for mods?

to start im gonna unscrew the bridge to make it float, to see if i can get it to come close to intonating. then im going to shim the neck to get the action into a playable range, and maybe new tuners. If i like the way it sounds it might get a new neck, to make it 24" or 25.5" scale. Originally i was gonna drop a humbucker in the bridge position, but thatd kind of ruin the character of it.

If i get sick of it, it might just get converted into a lefty for my brother. then its his problem

[GRUNGECASTER]

Looks like something manufactured in the Teisco Factory. Could be a Sears guitar

[jthomas]

Like I said: Kimberly

http://www.ebay.com/itm/used-kimberly-e ... 27db69891b" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[threewordname]

glued the crack in the neck pocket today and shimmed the neck, once i borrow a soldering iron and reconnect the ground ill see if its worth putting any money into

[kujoalt]

Hopefully you'll get it playable. I love Teiscos/other branded Japanese guitar when setup right. The pickups usually sound great!

[threewordname]

wow! now that its all together and set up, it actually plays pretty well. Got the intonation as close as i could after unmounting the bridge and sliding it to the best spot. i realized that most of the pickguard screw holes are stripped out, so theyll have to be filled and redrilled eventually. Its slightly microphonic, but im guessing thats pretty par for the course with metal pickguards, right? All in all, not a bad pick up (can't beat the price) even though it took me 3+ years and several apartments to actually get it playing.

the sound is kinda round and airy. Pretty manageable clean, but muddy as hell once you put any distortion on it. Probably wont see any band use, but i might use it to mix things up and get different sounds when im recording stuff by myself.

[threewordname]

Necro post on my own thread.

I was working on this guitar today, and snapped a picture of this stamp under the pickguard. Anyone know what those japanese characters mean?

https://flic.kr/p/2kzys9B

https://flic.kr/p/2kzy2rN

Sorry for the rough picture, it's an aluminum pg...

I finally polished the frets, oiled the rosewood and generally cleaned the grime off the rest of the guitar. This guy is starting to look pretty.