This guitar is inspired by The Model 1 designed by Rick Turner but was made with a body shape that is reminsicent of a Telecaster. The body was made from two separate pieces of wood. The mahogany back was radiused on the back, hollowed out to reduce weight, grain filled and stained to highlight the natural colours of the wood. The top is made from flamed maple which was also radiused and then joined to the back. A brown stain was used to highlight the flames, sanded and then restained with a yellow-orange tiger burst before being sealed and finished with a clear polyurethane.
The neck is made from plain maple, triple laminated with rosewood and walnut, and with an Indian Rosewood fret board. A dual action truss rod is accessed from the headstock. Metallic, eccentric fret markers are filled with epoxy and a colour matched feline motif is inlayed around the 12th fret. 3-aside Hipshot locking tuners provide excellent tuning stability and wide Nickel-Silver fret wire is used and complemented with a hand-carved bone nut. The neck has 22 frets and uses a 25.0 inch or 635 mm scale length, as used by PRS. The neck has a stacked heel made of maple and mahogany sandwiched with ebony veneer. The neck is joined with a hidden tenon and treated with a polyurethane finish.
The Telstar 2 Tiger uses an Iron Gear Steel Twin II pickup in the neck position. It is mounted in a circular holder made from mahogany that allows the pickup to be rotated to adjust the tone. The pickup produces a beautiful clean sound at low volumes but becomes warm and dirty when the gain is increased. The pickup in the bridge gives a classical tele twang which can be overdriven for some biting filth. Both pickups have a second boost coil which can be activated with the push-pull volume pot for a bit of extra oompf. A five-way switch allows selection between the neck pickup and a bridge pickup and the use of Bill Lawrence wiring enables two additional sounds. In position 4, the pickups are partially out of phase which gives a sound that is reminiscent of the intermediate positions of a stratocaster. Position 5 introdues a 10% decrease in bass to the neck pickup giving a beautiful clean tone. Which is nice!
