The universe told me to make this guitar, so I did

As I was browsing reverb for some deals, this body showed up first. It was strange to see a strar body cut for a telecaster neck heel… I knew I would likely have to make a neck for it, but it was so clean and at a price that I could not let it go. So I grabbed it.

Later, the neck came across my feed. A telecaster neck…. that was cut to mount onto a strat body!!

It was strange to me that I already had a strat body, which was cut for a telecaster neck heel… and then now here was a telecaster neck that was supposed to be mounted on a strat body…it was mahogany, and I knew it would pair well with the black body I already had.

The pickups… are sort of a sad and halfway funny story at the same time. An older gentleman came to me and brought a pile of parts. He said he saw Merle Haggard in the late 60s or early 70s, and either Merle or his guitar player was playing a telecaster with a humbucker in the neck, and a tele bridge pickup, with a bigbys vibrato unit. And this was in 2024 mind you.. but he was sort of in a hurry, not rushing me, but asking if I could make it a priority to get the guitar done for him.

Ever since that time he wanted this setup. So I took the pile of parts and assembled this guitar for him. I recognized the pickups! I had taken them out of a guitar probably 10 years before, and misplaced them at my local music store. I frequently do work there and have since I was in high school.

So I figure I must have left them laying around, this fella saw the pickups, made the store owner an offer, and they were sold to the gentleman without me knowing!

I was not missing them for a long time, one day I thought, hey I should have some gibson pickups around somewhere for some project i was thinking about at the time…. but I could never find them. So I figured I must have never brought them home from the music store. So much time had passed I simply blamed myself for not keeping up with them, and not labeling them as mine, and they got sold from the store… and oh well…. such is life.

I asked the old fella where he got them, and he told me… well right here! They were in the counter and I made an offer, probably 8 or 10 years ago. I knew then they were my missing pickups!

I wasn’t worried about getting them back or anything, I just thought it was very funny that this gentleman ended up with my lost pickups, then came back years later and asked me to put the neck pickup in a guitar for him!

So the guitar was built. But it turned out that the gibson neck pickup WAY outmatched the tele bridge pickup. So he didn’t like them in this guitar. He purchased a Seymour Duncan neck pickup which was designed to match a telecaster bridge pickup in output.

About a month after I put the guitar together for him, he called me and said, “Hey I have this new pickup for the neck. If you put it in for me, as payment just take these gibson pickups.” I told him that he would be overpaying me. He also said he did not want to rush me, but again time was of the essence, so please make this a priority and get the guitar back to him as soon as possible.

He said it doesn’t matter that he would be over paying me, he would not be needing these pikcups for anything, so you go ahead and take them as payment.

So the deal was done. I swapped the neck pickup out for him, which was only 2 screws and 2 solder joints, and he paid me in the form of my own missing set of pickups!

Speaking with the store owner… I realized why the older gentleman would not need the pickups…. and why time was important to him… he didn’t have much time left… and he knew it…

He was dying of pancreatic cancer…

Either way, I am glad he trusted me, and I was glad to be a part of making his 50 year old dream guitar come to life.

So that is how the pickups, which were originally mine, ended up back in my possession, and I decided to use them for this guitar.

Thanks for reading the story! Probably only a handful will read this.

And thank you for watching! Enjoy your day.