Ladies and Gents, I present to you the first ever ‘Tone Cartel’ guitar ever built. Funny enough, this guitar was my first parts-tele I ever made. It was about 8 years ago so it was pretty cool to be able to see how much I’ve improved and fix a few mistakes I did. Some stuff was a little too permanent like the ‘checking’ but aside from that I must say that this tele is holding up pretty damn good. Felt good to officially put that decal on there! Here she is! #Modernguitartech001
#MGT001
So I build this parts-tele about 8 years ago for a friend. So a little after I graduated from Guitar Craft Academy one of my first gigs was a guitar tech over at Guitar Center in West LA. The dude before me got fired because he pissed off too many customers and was really messy. When I came in I inherited a mess of work and drawers full of parts so little by little I started building this baby.
Specs:
Body: Warmoth 72 tele body
Neck: Warmoth Tele neck 9.5 radius
Hardware: Gotoh bridge & Fender Locking tuners
Electronics: Unknown Bareknuckle Pickup & CTS pots
Rough shape
Although my client loved it eventually it sat unplayed for a few years. I’ll also be the first to admit that that Bareknuckle I threw in there didn’t really sound very good. It was just too hot and since my client is more on the bluesier side of things this was a bad choice. Also, because the neck didn’t have a finish it started to absorb dirt and that gave it a hideous and odd coloring. IT LOOKED REALLY BAD!!!!
Lets get her back in action
I always get asked what I use when I relic brand new necks. I love the stewmac vintage amber spray but then will mix it up with a tad of dark mahogany spray from Behlem. Then I top it with some clear lacquer to seal everything and finally start sanding.
Body and sound
When I inherited this body (Warmoth) it already had a few dings and scratches so we decided to give it a nice cool little relic job. Just made sense and I think it looks really fucking cool too! I again used some of the yellow aged lacquer on edges to make it pop more. Also, I think I get asked alot about the flower pickguard. I made that when I made the guitar, I went to the fabric store and picked out this flower pattern. I dont know why but it just fell in love with it and i think it worked well. We also decided to replace the bareknuckle with a Seymour Duncan 59’.
El Tone Cartel is Born
My guitars needed a name and ‘Munoz Guitars’ sounds like a classical guitar company from Spain or some shit. ANYWAYS… I wanted something interesting and cool sounding! EL TONE CARTEL just sounded right. I'll be building under this name now so please stay tuned for more builds I’ve been working on! Enjoy and as always please holler with any questions or feedback.
