The Telstar is reminiscent of the classic Telecaster. The body is made from a single piece of mahogany with a flamed maple cap and ivory binding. The mahogany is hollowed out to reduce the weight of the guitar and grain filled and stained to highlight the grain and natural colours of the wood. The maple cap is stained with a vibrant red, orange and yellow pattern to emphasise the flamed figure. The mahogany behind the f-hole is stained and finished before fitting the cap. The body is finished with polyurethane.
Our standard model has a plain maple neck and maple fretboard with the dual action truss rod fitted under the fretboard. The truss rod access hole is decorated with aged copper leaf. Mother of Pearl or metallic rod fret markers with epoxy fill are used. The neck in custom versions of this guitar (as shown here) is made from a single piece of flamed maple with the truss rod inserted from behind and concealed with a bubinga skunk stripe. Hipshot locking tuners provide excellent tuning stability and wide Nickel-Silver fret wire is used and complemented with a hand-carved bone nut. The fret board comes with or without an inlayed gecko motif. The neck has 21 frets and uses the standard fender scale length of 25.5 inches or 647.5 mm. The neck is stained a light amber colour and made to look "rustic" in keeping with the body colours and a satin oil finish enhances the grain of the wood.
The Telstar features pickups from Iron Gear as standard. The twin II pickups are single coil pickups but each pickup has a second coil that can be switched in to boost the sound. The neck pickup produces a beautiful clean sound and the bridge pickup gives a characteristic tele-twang that can be tamed with the tone pot. A 5-way switch is used for 'Bill Lawrence' wiring that enhances the range of tones available. Positions 1,2 and 3 are as standard and switch between neck, neck+bridge and bridge. Position 4 puts the two pickups out of phase to give a stratocaster style sound and position 5 adds a capacitor to the neck pickup to produce an even clearer tone.
The volume control is a push pull potentiometer that allows the additional windings of each pickup to be engaged for a high output boost to the sound.
A chrome surround is used for the neck pickup. Gotoh or Klusner top-loading bridges provide excellent control of intonation with style. The Gotoh bridge has 3 brass saddles that allow good intonation of each string. The Klusner bridge has individual saddles.
