Mike Bloomfield’s Telecaster

this is the Telecaster that Mike bloomfield opened up I got my mojo working on the first Paul Butterfield Blues Band album it's also the guitar that I saw him play in 1963 when I was in a band called the spiders Jay Edwards and I were there watching the Mike bloomfield R&B band at the Michigan Union we didn't know anything about him or who he was and then I never thought too much about him again until the Bob Dylan album came out highway 61 revisited and everyone I knew went to school on the guitar solos and the leads and the backup on those songs like a rolling stone that summer of 65 they played at Newport the Newport Folk Festival and he backed up Bob Dole in there and also sat in with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band which he later joined Bob Dylan going electric and Butterfield being electric they got booed off the stage because it was a bunch of focus and they didn't want to go electric and that was a big moment in history end of the summer Bloomfield had joined the Butterfield band when they recorded that first album that fall and he used this on that album we saw him play with the Butterfield bin in December of 65 and out comes the Butterfield bin with Elvin Bishop Marc naphthalene Jerome Morrow Butterfield and Mike bloomfield and they killed us just the wall of sound and we became blues man right then and there a month later Bloomfield's back again Butterfield I should say and Bloomfield doesn't have this he has a Goldtop Les Paul because he had just traded this to a guy in New York City named John noose John noose was a left-handed player he got this guitar and you can see that there's holes from strap buttons all over the horn it was one here one there one here one there he was trying everything to get it to play finally cut it away or had it cut away and that would have been back in 1965-66 who knows how long he played it before he did that anyway I'm particularly interested in checking out this guitar for the men that has inherited it when John noose died two years ago and authenticated telling what's right or wrong with it and I thought it would be fun if we all went through that together the first thing I always do and most of you probably know that is sight the neck it's got a little bit of a backbone in it going back that way maybe the truss rod is too tight maybe these strings or 9s are too wimpy maybe it needs some beef what happens is it's buzzing and get rid of some of that by raising up the bridge saddles but I couldn't get rid of that one it's a high fret it's right down here the first fret is popped up I can take a radius block seven and a quarter that's what this board is and clamping on all three frets and press that down level to the others with a little glue but I'm just going to leave it unless somebody asked me to do that where it's inspecting this my first thought when I saw the nut was that was the original nut and it was chummed up with a nice little piece of rosewood there but then as I got deeper into it I decided it's not because the string spacing is different than the worn in spacings on the rosewood that would have come back when the nut was way low in the slot from the factory and you wind the strings and I'm strong angle to the bottom of the post and it makes those marks in the Rosewood so somewhere along the years somebody put a different bone nut in this but it is bone going on down the fingerboard this guitar has been reef ready with the right size of frets maybe more than once I don't know but they pulled the frets out up and out and they should have driven them out sideways it's well known that back in this era fender installed the fret sideways with a strange machine that pulled them in that left the barbs down underneath the wood well if you come in with nippers and pull them up like this the barbs make chips there's a big one big one and there's probably chips that have the frets all the way down the neck if it gets referred it can be fixed and looked pretty good something else to know is that it is a seven and a quarter inch radius whoever fret of this didn't dole out sanding or leveling which is what I would have done on a guitar like this you know it's got a thin fingerboard you don't want to take much wood off let's take the neck off and see how the rod works this is an LC research on umber is l11 155 and according to George groans book a guide to vintage guitars that would make it 1963 so that jives I'm also going through my screwdrivers and picking out the most sharp one of that size because there's a lot of rust and dirt down an easel I don't want to be a guide to strip them out err small there it is 3rd of August 1963 EB so George is right about the year and B means it's 1 and 5/8 with at the nut that's what it B with means and the first thing you do with any guitar is loosen the truss rod to see if there's tension on it not tighten it and this feels a little snug it could be snug in the wood hole or it could be snug on the threads I'm going to go loosen it feel stiff but I don't think it's got tension I think it's just dirty now it's loose maybe a eighth of a turn and it lost any grip that it had on the truss rod and it is tighten the hole it's a 832 that's the thinnest of the fender truss rod you want to be real careful because those are the ones that break the most what I'll do is lubricate this the little Vaseline or machinist wax put a little bit on the face and put it back on and see what it does here we go that's moving right away that's like 1/8 of a turn there's a little bit more it's got a good action more than we need because it's got a slight back bow in it to begin with right here in the neck cavity we have a shim I think it's probably factory it's not just cardboard it's like phenolic or something I've seen the red ones a lot I don't recall seeing a gray one but it's been a long time if it was my guitar I'd pull that out and try to set it up without it because it creates an air gap and can even warp the neck when the screws pull it down tight for now we're going to get some screws off this thing and take a look inside that's the color that guitar was when I first saw it and when I look at these pickups right away I thought something's weird with the wires and I called Linda Freeman and sent him a picture of both pickups and he said those are 68 he could tell by the wires it's plastic and it's got colors that's not the cloth wire and he also said that on the bridge pickup they shouldn't be sharp they're very sharp on the pole pieces you can feel them he goes no those would have been tumbled there you have it 1063 so this is made in October the neck was made in August that's typical of fender sometimes they were about two months apart with the neck and a body and in here we have replace pots these are one Meg that would have been 250 K one three seven six six 36 that's a 1966 pot I'd say the switch is original and was wired on two with the new pickups which are 1968 pickups interesting I'm curious to see what the power of these pickups is what their output is and I'll check that next I'm using a multimeter on the 20k range to read the pickup output I'm grounding on the bridge plate there five point nine four five point nine five K on the bridge six point nine two on the neck and those are both very typical for those pickups I put 11s on this and it's playing great you got rid of that string buzz pulled that first string up enough and it pulled all it all the frets are playing now they could be better it needs a fret dress or even a reef Rhett but all in all just with a little tweak and it's playing like a million bucks and it would probably sell for more than that you once upon a time you dress so fine through the

Channel: StewMac

Views: 800,572

Keywords: Bob Dylan, Mike Bloomfield (Musical Artist), Newport Folk Festival (Music Festival), Guitar Inspection, Historic, Fender Telecaster (Guitar)

Id: W5oCY-1dnso

Length: 9min 30sec (570 seconds)

Published: Thu May 07 2015