A bit of history. Back in the late eighties, when I was in high school, I played with a bass and I picked up an old beater six string to mess with as well. I never did get very good with the bass. I know now that it's setup was so bad it was nearly unplayable. As for the six string, it was the weirdest looking thing I'd ever seen. Unfortunately, there was a spring missing from the tailpiece, the trem arm was long gone, and the neck was held on with these gigantic ugly wood screws. I was never able to get the thing to hold a tune long enough to be playable and had long since decided the $100 I'd paid for it was a complete waste of money. Both of these guitars have been languishing in my parents basement for the last twenty or so years, patiently waiting for me to re-discover my interest in playing guitar.
So finally, after many years, I have decided to get back into music, this time playing, building, and fixing guitars. I've purchased a new Squier Strat and have a couple of kit builds underway. This week I dragged my two old guitars and my Peavey bass amp home from my parents house. They were happy to have the "junk" gone from their basement. After an hour of tweaking, my old Cort bass is fully playable and I look forward to toying around with it.
This left the ugly duckling beast of a six string. My original plan was to either part it out or practice my re-finishing skills on it, converting it over to a modern hardtail or tune-o-matic bridge and replacing the open gear tuners with something a bit more modern. But my gut told me, before I started modifying anything on this nameless beast, I should try to find out what it is. There are no identification marks on it except a "Made in Japan" tag with the model number 960 on it. It didn't take me long to figure out this monster was a Teisco SS-4L from '62-'64. Fortunately, I'd found this out before cutting into the old girl.
Armed with the information that these were a fairly sought after collectors item, I proceeded to give the Teisco a quick once over. The tuning issue had more to do with loose tuners than with the missing spring in the tailpiece. I dowelled the neck and re-set it with modern neck screws, fixed the loose tuners, adjusted the tremello tailpiece, a new set of 10-46 strings, and gave the multiple switches a little tweak so they'd work. Wow, am I ever glad I didn't cut this beast up. It sounds absolutely amazing. The bridge assembly cannot compensate for intonation so most of the strings are sharp at the octave but those old gold foil pickups are really sweet. This thing makes my Strat sound like strings stretched over a piece of lumber. Gotta love it when a closet queen turns into such a wonderful gem of a guitar.
My guitar collection thus far, the Teisco in the middle.
This is someone on YouTube playing a Teisco SS-4L (no, not me, I'm not that good). I love the depth of the sound this beast can make. The audio of the YouTube video doesn't do it justice.
Doug M
