As I said, it started out with me listening to a couple Richie Kotzen songs. Not a bad song on the albums. So I figure I will try to get that tone by converting a stock American Fender tele. Here you will see the entire process, start to finish.

In doing my homework on this topic, I quickly realized a couple things that would present a problem:

1. The neck: being a mostly Strat or Les Paul player, the tele neck is not for me (and I hear that Kotzen's tele neck is very wide) so I immediately altered the original idea to opt for a strat neck. Depending on who you talk to, a Fender strat neck will fit right up with only some cosmetic issues (if you use a 21-fret neck) or overhang issues (22 fret neck). Dear reader, you will see more on this later.

2. The electronics: without ripping apart a real Kotzen tele (hence, what would be the point), I am reduced to some guesses at the real wiring configuration. Again, more on this later.

3. The colors: who cares ;-) To me, the color was secondary, which will become obvious in the pics. I don't collect guitars to put them on the shelf, I really play them.

The fun and easy part of the project - you get to buy cool stuff and rip apart an otherwise working guitar. Number 1 todo item, of course, was to buy an American Tele. This plan bit the dust right away when I found a blem black Mexican Fender tele at the local Guitarc***** establishment. No nice forearm rest, this thing is a chunk of wood. After playing the thing for a bit (I'm not a big tele collector) I proceeded straightaway to the teardown as shown. This took a total of about an hour - I love taking things apart! Note how I take the strings off first ;-)

I tried to minimize the vendor list, so I acquired the parts as follows. Note that after some analysis, I opted for a pre-wired 5-way Tele setup from Rothstein guitars as opposed to guessing at the configuration. This may change down the road.

Check out my parts! You know....they're all there...

The knobs man, its about the knobs! Pearl and Pearloid. Know it.

No comparison against the old knobs, gentle reader.

Don't forget to remove the string ferrules...a clothes hangar worked nicely here.

The stock output jack assembly is a piece of CRAP! Always loose when you need it tight. I could not get the center to hold still whilst turning the bolt. Total garbage. Are you reading this Fender? In the end, I dremmeled the damn thing off. The replacement will be a electrosocket jack mount from Stew-Mac.

Okay, this is the least glamorous part of the job. But I always make sure the dirty work is done right. I relied heavily on some guidance from GuitarNuts for this.

De-soldering the ground contact for the bridge pickup. Can I have another hand? The other one is holding my beer.

This tele has some pretty odd pits in the bottom of the cutouts. The shielding was a pain in the ass, but with some authentic Buddhist patience and some solder work, it came out looking alright. Honestly? I enjoyed the meticulousness of it. It got my mind focused on something eerily similar to software development for a while (the analogy? looks easy, but getting it done can be a messy business! Yeeeahhh!!!).
Note that I am not overlapping the edges, because I plan on re-using the original ground contacts.

Here is how the pickguard shielding went.

Body shielding complete.

Better make sure these holes match up. Looks ok to me!!

Total elapsed time: about 4, 3-hour sessions; 5 beers, one Vodka/tonic, and one Crown Royal/squirt.

If you don't have a good neck, your guitar will suck! I looked at a lot of necks and finally found one that met the criteria:
- it had to be Extremely Badass!
- it had to be top-quality
- it had to be maple (Corko loves maple necks), so birdseye maple is an added bonus...

Based on the pics from Warmoth (below) I think you will agree that this one is it. See for yourself.

Received the neck early (this never happens in the software biz!) July 25, 2008!!! Check this out!

Testimonial #345:
"I was just a normal asshole before I received my Warmoth neck.....Now I'm a normal asshole with a cool Warmoth neck!!"
-Corko, AZ

Progress here was a bit stalled due to venue change, and a broken pot connection, forcing me to re-order some parts.

As soon as things were ready again, it was electrical time. The big chore was definitely the 5-way switch. Witnesseth:

Had to hunt down more parts to prepare for the rest, some nice gold fender pegs and some Schaller locks. Dig y'all:

More on the way....!

Have not gotten to this yet.

Sound clips to come.