Recognize this guitar?

[Markku Nyytäjä]

A friend of mine found an old Tele-like solid body electric guitar in his attic. The day before he brought it to me. I thought it seemed to be a cheap Japanese interpretation of the Telecaster, dating probably from the 1960's. The body is quite thin, about 40 mm thick and the overall build quality, with the exception of the nice mahogany neck, is coarse. The neck could be Teisco, but I'm not 100% sure. The pickguard has a printed illustration of a man, looking as though it could be from Mad magazine. Thanks to David King's post, a list of rare pickups, I found the origin of the pickups. They are Japanese Prestige single coils. Now I'm wondering if anyone else has seen a guitar like this and could tell me what it is. I just might make it playable again.

[Mark Swanson]

Yes, it's japanese from the 60's all right!

[David King]

I like the safety pin vibrato arrangement. I hope you can string it up and hear it soon.

[Markku Nyytäjä]

I didn't want to lose the safety pin, so I left it there. The guitar must have been played by a punk rock guitarist.

[Ben Castellana]

A friend turned me on to this really cool site that has weird pickups and guitars (mostly Japanese) cataloged (http://drowninginguitars.com/2012/06/29 ... yclopedia/. There is a Prestige and a Teisco pickup that look very similar to the ones in this guitar. Check out the "Tele-Style A" guitar on the Jedson Guitar historical page http://home.roadrunner.com/~flask/jedso ... ectric.htm; Jedson guitars were manufactured by Teisco. Very cool!

[Markku Nyytäjä]

Thanks, Ben. The guitar seems to be a Jedson Tele Style C with Prestige pickups typical to Jedson Tele Style A. The body has been painted brown with a brush afterwards and the surface looks pretty awful.
If the pickups are any good, the guitar could be restored to a playable state, if only I can find a replacement bridge with a 50 mm spacing. The tuners are on a standard 24 mm spaced 6-in-line rib and the bushings also have the common 8 mm outer and 6 mm inner measures. If the owner wants the guitar restored, it might be a good idea to sand the body paint off and spray it with some nice lacquer. It might turn into a fun retro guitar, even if it had some new parts.