Andy Summers was just out of college in Southern California in the early 1970s when one of his guitar students offered to sell him a beat-up 1961 Fender Telecaster® that had obviously been modified by a previous owner.

Summers had already had some modest music business success in the late ’60s Britain. Lately though, he’d stuck mainly to his classical guitar studies, and hadn’t played an electric in quite a while. Strangely, however, something about this particular Telecaster grabbed him. As he put it himself in his 2006 memoir, One Train Later:

When I start to play it, something stirs within me … it shakes me … I find that I can’t stop playing it; this guitar sparks something in me and I have to have it.

Summers bought the guitar for $200, and you and the whole world know the rest. Back in London a few years later, he joined a noisy so-called punk outfit called the Police that rose to become the biggest band in the world, thanks in no small part to the deftly innovative and influential sounds Summers conjured from that beat-up Telecaster.

Hit after hit was recorded and performed on it—“Roxanne,” “So Lonely,” “Walking On the Moon,” the breathtaking “Message In a Bottle,” “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” “Every Breath You Take,” “Wrapped Around Your Finger,” “Synchronicity II” and “King of Pain.”

Tonight in between spraying coats on my archtop project, I started my next guitar project (and probably the last for a while). I am making myself a copy, as close as I can of Andy’ Summers’ telecaster.

I dont have any alder on hand so I am using poplar for my body. I first laminated a 3 piece body blank (just because I had a few pieces I wanted to use up, and since the finish will be a 3 colour opaque burst I dont care about the grain appearance) and rough cut it out on the band saw.

Then, I planed it to 1 3/4″ thickness and put it through my thickness sander to clean up the faces. Then after retracing the outline, I sanded the edges on my edge sander and drum sander.

(if you want to see rough wood, being jointed and planed check out my other build threads.. this one will be step by step from here on but I did the blank while I forgot my camera at home).

Let me simply call it Tele, for the sake of consistency. To me Tele is a log compared to Strat. In fact, Telecaster is physically heavier and so is the sound, but could be still bright enough thanks to the pair of single-coils, which at first were the only choice and remains one of the possible pickup settings nowadays. Otherwise Telecaster is available with much more pickup configurations, including humbucking pickups. It actually depends on series which pickup setting you will be able to get the guitar with. American Standard series Telecaster, for instance, is available traditionally with two single-coils and additionally even with three of them.

You should know that Telecaster is one of the first solid body electric guitars ever made and the very first electric guitar that has actually gained interest and success in terms of sale. The fact that it is still being serially produced these days (after more than 60 years) with just a little of change tells us much about its popularity, therefore about its quality. Yes, you may link these two things. However, there still has been no explanation given, what’s this all for, how can the guitar of such a simple shape be worthy of all those nice words and facts. Here it goes. Another nice word that describes it even better: universality. With its ability to produce either a warm, mellow, soft or a sharp, bright and cutting tone Telecaster is more than worthy of it, at least as for those few mortals: Bruce Springsteen, Keith Richards, Albert Lee, Andy Summers, Albert Collins, James Burton, Frank Black. These are only few guitarists, who played or are still playing strictly Telecaster. Otherwise it’s been played by lots of other guitarists, even by Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix and Pete Townshend.