While doing some research for an upcoming post about Eric Clapton’s “Woman tone”, I ended up trying my 1978 Telecaster with a setup I had just previously used with a Stratocaster. It had nothing to do with Clapton but I liked the tone and it reminded me how efficient a Telecaster can be to get a good biting rock tone. I also found that by rolling off the “Tone” control on the guitar, things got even more interesting. Here is the result (setup details and settings after the video):

The setup is 1978 Telecaster, bridge pickup -> Boss SD-1 with Tone at zero, Drive at 2 o’clock, Level at 3 o’clock -> Analogman TS9 with Drive at 3 o’clock, Tone at 9 o’clock, Level at noon -> 1974 Fender Champ set clean. A zest of compression and plate reverb were added in Cubase, and here you are: a nitty gritty dirty rock tone full of sustain, Telecaster style, coming out of a very small amp.

For those of you having a “squealing” problem with the bridge pickup of your Telecaster while using a lot of gain, I advise you to have the pickup wax potted by a professional. It did wonders to my Telly.

For those of you interested in fattening their Strat or Tele tone, don’t forget the Pro Co RAT 2.