Premier Guitar features affiliate links to help support our content. We may earn a commission on any affiliated purchases.

Reader Guitar of the Month: Theseus Tele

Reader Guitar of the Month: Theseus Tele

After a lefty player finally experienced a Tele for the first time, he turned it into his dream tone machine.

Name: Alex Poterack
Hometown: Providence, Rhode Island
Guitar: Theseus Tele

When you're left-handed, you don't get to play a ton of different guitars. That's how I managed to play for 15 years without really experiencing a Tele. I used a rather large Amazon gift card I got for my 27th birthday to buy a Squier Classic Vibe Tele on a whim.


Name: Alex Poterack

When it came, I was skeptical. It was insanely heavy, the tuners were clunky, and its thin strings sounded dull. When I plugged it into a cranked-up amp, however, it roared with that dirty-yet-defined Keith Richards tone that I'd been trying and failing to get forever. I knew the Tele bridge pickup sound was IT for me.

Still, there were things I didn't like about the guitar. Like many players, I found the stock neck pickup basically useless. I replaced it with a Seymour Duncan Alnico II Pro humbucker, and a new switching system based around a 4-way switch and two push-pull pots, which I used as a phase switch and a bass cut. This worked wonderfully, vastly increasing the versatility. Emboldened by this success, I went crazy with upgrades, replacing the bridge, tuners, body, and neck. For those keeping score at home, I replaced literally everything except the bridge pickup, and in doing so made my number one guitar, which, in my mind, is perfect. The Warmoth body is as light as they come, and the Musikraft neck came with a slightly thicker profile than I ordered, but is the most comfortable neck I've ever played. I've had the guitar in its final form for a couple years now, and it's still the one I play 90 percent of the time in my rock band, Wild Accusations. I even bought a new bridge pickup and reassembled the old parts into an Esquire (pictured below, on the right).

Theseus is the mythical founder-hero of Athens. A classic philosophical thought experiment considers a ship of his preserved as a museum in a harbor. Whenever a piece of it wears out, it's replaced. Eventually, every part has been replaced. Is it still the same ship? I don't have a strong opinion on that, but I do know that my Tele, "Theseus," is the most killer guitar I've ever had, and likely ever will.

Send your guitar story to submissions@premierguitar.com.

[Updated 9/22/21]

Tom Bedell in the Relic Music acoustic room, holding a custom Seed to Song Parlor with a stunning ocean sinker redwood top and milagro Brazilian rosewood back and sides.

As head of Breedlove and Bedell Guitars, he’s championed sustainability and environmental causes—and he wants to tell you about it.

As the owner of the Breedlove and Bedell guitar companies, Tom Bedell has been a passionate advocate for sustainable practices in acoustic guitar manufacturing. Listening to him talk, it’s clear that the preservation of the Earth’s forests are just as important to Bedell as the sound of his guitars. You’ll know just how big of a statement that is if you’ve ever had the opportunity to spend time with one of his excellently crafted high-end acoustics, which are among the finest you’ll find. Over the course of his career, Bedell has championed the use of alternative tonewoods and traveled the world to get a firsthand look at his wood sources and their harvesting practices. When you buy a Bedell, you can rest assured that no clear-cut woods were used.

Read MoreShow less

ENGL, renowned for its high-performance amplifiers, proudly introduces the EP635 Fireball IR Pedal, a revolutionary 2-channel preamp pedal designed to deliver the legendary Fireball tone in a compact and feature-rich format.

Read MoreShow less

The Gibson EH-185, introduced in 1939, was one of the company’s first electric guitars.

Photo by Madison Thorn

Before the Les Pauls and SGs, this aluminum-reinforced instrument was one of the famous brand’s first electric guitars.

Read MoreShow less

J Mascis is well known for his legendary feats of volume.

Read MoreShow less