NGD 2013 Trussart Steelcaster

[Deft Tungsman]

I've been playing guitar for 43 years, yet have never owned a Telecaster.


Until yesterday.


Late to the party? Yes.


I'm off to a pretty good start, though.







That's the executive summary.


For more background, see this SteelDeville NGD thread from 2017: https://www.thegearpage.net/board/in...ntent.1828876/


Not long after I got the SteelDeville, my band broke up, and I started playing acoustic guitar almost exclusively. I sold the Trussart without regrets. It was beautiful and sounded as good or even better than my #1 Trussart Strat from the early '90s. But it was on the heavy side, and the neck dive issue was a structural buzzkill. Awesome tones on all settings, but the control layout was confusing to navigate. It also made me realize yet again how much I hate push-pull knob switching: it's simply too tricky to pull up on a knob without twisting it right or left. The coil-splits on the SteelDeville were on the volume knobs, so it was even worse than the usual tone knob position.


Over the past 5-6 years, I have been playing my electrics rarely, if at all. Sure, I still browse the Internet for guitar and amp porn. But I'm all set in every department, don't need and would never use another amp, and I certainly don't need another acoustic.


I turned 60 last week. No fanfare, no plans to celebrate other than spending the evening at home with my lovely wife. Sweet, but kinda boring, right?


So, I decided to spoil myself with a new guitar, a new ELECTRIC guitar, to fill the gaping T-style hole in my little bevy of instruments. After a few days' trawling the net, I zeroed in on this sublime Steelcaster.


I love it way more than the SteelDeville. The Arcane single-coils don't make me feel any need for a humbucker sound, which keeps the switching options limited to the bare minimum. It's bone simple, very intuitive. This guitar is also a lighter, with no neck dive. It sports a beautiful rendition of the Rust-O-Matic relic look. The amount of handwork that goes into crafting a Trussart is much more apparent here than on the shiny chrome ones.


A winner in every way. Happy birthday to me !

[GoPappy]

Congrats! That is a very, very cool looking guitar. How much does it weigh?

[joeappel]

Happy Birthday! That's a very cool guitar.

[Glennwillow]

Congratulations on a very cool guitar!

- Glenn

[arwhite]

Sweet! Very cool guitar indeed!

[Deft Tungsman]

Originally Posted by GoPappy

Congrats! That is a very, very cool looking guitar. How much does it weigh?

3.7 kg, around 8lbs. 2 oz. Ideally, it would weigh a few hundred grams less, but none of my other electrics are lighter, with the exception of the Teuffel Birdfish.

Then again, what's a few more ounces when the guitar looks and performs like this Army Surplus tone machine?

[Mark L]

Just thought I’d add “nice little Matchless” as well. How’s it pair with that Trussart?

[Deft Tungsman]

Thanks for all the comments, everyone. I am over the moon with this guitar!

The little Matchless Baby is a wonderful amp. It gives me world-class tones at apartment-friendly volumes. It loves my overdrive pedals, in fact, it loves all my pedals.

The Baby has a Spitfire preamp circuit, feeding a single-ended EL84 output stage. It has a lot less gain than my Lightning. It's also a lot less brutal and in your face. I love them both.

I got the Lightning in 1995, and the Baby 25 years later. I was incredibly lucky to find this amp. Matchless stopped production after a couple of dozen units. They rarely come up for sale. Mine is #13 and one of the few built for 220v operation.

[Deft Tungsman]

The Lightning lives in our country house. I’m having a great weekend!

IMG_1677865798.467244.jpgIMG_1677865808.194699.jpgIMG_1677865815.499811.jpgIMG_1677865822.759756.jpg

[Mark L]

Good info on the Matchless, thanks!
And best wishes on that new guitar!!

[GoPappy]

Ok, you can't just show us pics that include that headless guitar and leave us hanging. Tell us about that one.

[Deft Tungsman]

Originally Posted by GoPappy

Ok, you can't just show us pics that include that headless guitar and leave us hanging. Tell us about that one.

That’s my Teuffel Birdfish, the Tinker Toy Leo Fender never made.

Visit Ulrich Teuffel’s website at teuffel.com to read about the man, the designer, his philosophy. You’ll see great photos of the Birdfish and the other models he’s designed over the past 25 years.

Uli developed the Birdfish in the mid-nineties. It is a completely modular electric guitar whose components, save for the bridge and the neck, are quickly interchangeable while the strings are under tension.

Electronics first. Standard S-style five-way pickup selector, nothing innovative there. The guitar comes with two reverse-wound single coils and three humbuckers - a sort of P90, a vintage PAF and a more modern high output pickup for harder rock. The pickups have mono input sockets and are held in place by an elegant thumbscrew assembly. It takes less than a minute to swap them in and out. They’re mounted on a metal ruler along which they can slide freely, so you can place any pickup anywhere, no tools required. Ditto pickup height and angle of orientation. A brilliant design.

Ulrich calls the wooden components of the body “tonebars”. They are bolted onto two aluminum struts, one for the neck, one for the bridge. Under the lovely painted finish are two precision-carved cylinders of solid wood. Due to the design of the Birdfish, all of the vibrational energy of the strings passes through the wooden tonebars. When you play the instrument unplugged, you can tell that the tonebars resonate more quickly, more freely and with more sustain than the wooden body on a traditional electric guitar.

I got my Birdfish in 2000. It came with two sets of tonebars , swamp ash and Michigan maple. In 2020, I had Uli send me two more sets, mahogany and alder. Each timber has its own resonance and envelope of attack. I believe that any audible differences are barely perceptible once the signal has been processed by effects, amps, and uploaded to the internet. The way the guitar feels and responds, however, does change in a way that is immediately apparent to the player. I know from experience that each set of tonebars nudges my playing in slightly different directions.

Just a couple of examples. Swamp ash = lovely woody lows and shimmering highs, scooped mids. Maple = mid-focused, dry, edgy. Mahogany = less woody, with a bell-like balance across the frequencies. Alder = my current favorite, lightweight, balance and expressiveness, clarity and warmth. These are the acoustic properties of the guitar unplugged. Teuffel’s proprietary pickups are masterful at capturing those differences.

Sorry about the long response, but hey, you asked.

It’s truly amazing that Uli had the vision and wherewithal to meld all these technical and engineering innovations into such a stunning work of functional art.

[Beachrunner]

Very nice axes!

[GoPappy]

Tungsman, thanks for the information. Very interesting, and a very cool looking guitar.