Chords for Joe Bonamassa's Vintage Telecaster Tone Tips & Tricks

Hi ladies and gentlemen Joe Bonamassa here with the Telecaster du jour video of the day
Um a lot of sounds in a telly especially an old one now.
You don't need an old one to achieve any of this stuff
You just need an old wiring
You know
Set up this happens to be a January of
1954 one of the last of the black guards and I bought this from Norm Harris at Norm's rare guitars and one of the strangest
guitar deals I've ever done
Anyway, that's a subsequent story that we could we could deal with it all the time
Needless to say he walked back and forth
From and talked to me and talked to the granddaughter of the original owner
Talked to me talked to the granddaughter of the original owner.
He made $9,000 in in three trips around his store
Nope, and that's all I will disclose.
He's a true master
Anyway, January 54 telly still got the old wiring now you can do this
You could wire it up put the capacitor in so everybody says well, there's three sounds in a vintage Telecaster
So you have the dead tone, which is basically the front pickup with a capacitor
_ _ [G] _ _
_ _ [Em] _ Good for your your jazz gig
_ Front pickup in the middle conversely to where modern tellies are wired front pickup is in the middle and it's front pickup only Oh
_ _ [G] _ _ _ [C] _ _ _
_ [A] _ _ _ _ _ [G] _ _
_ Get your Steve Cropper [E] on and then full-on lead pickup
_ _ _ [G] _ _ _
_ _ [E] Now you may be asking Joe why are you just speaking the obvious I said well because in a vintage wiring _
Setup like this.
There are actually four sounds you can get the two blended together
So this is a switchcraft three-way position
It is no different than the switchcraft
three-way position switch that they use on Stratocasters
It's just angled horizontally not kind of perpendicular.
So
You can you can wedge it
[G] _ _ _ _ _ _ [G] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ So you have four sounds out of a [E] vintage telly _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [A] _ _ _ _
[G] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [Bm] _ _
[Gm] _ _ [A] _ _ [G] _ _ _ _
_ There are your four sounds out of a vintage telly
fun fact of the day
Now you may be saying to yourself Joseph Leonard Bonamassa the first and only
_ Why do you leave the cover on?
Well the ashtray
well, I do and I don't and I did a deep dive because when I was about
11 or 12 years old I
_ _ _ Got to sit in with the great Albert Collins and I was an Albert Collins fanatic.
I still am and he always had
This on _ _ his telly he'd play the gig with it with the ashtray.
Now.
It's easy to take off.
Boom
There's a little solder drop.
I don't know why they put that on there
But this that little solder drop makes this thing really effing expensive
Especially for one of these.
Well, if you leave it on and you sting a note like Albert would do, you know
[B] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ Well, he was an open F so he had a different tuning he would capo but I'm just doing a crappy
Imitation now just for a demonstration.
So I did the deep dive so I would do that
_ _ [C#] _ _ _ _
[D] _ _ And then I put the thing back on and I was using a 59 telly which was kind of like we use it on the Capitol record _
like backstroke, you know
[E] _ _ _ _ _
So two things what it does is
[D] your natural
Propensity would be to if you have the cover off and your finger picking is is rest your hand here
_ _ [B] _ _
[C] _ So what you're doing is you're kind of naturally muting the guitar unless you're playing flamenco style which is highly unlikely
_ [N] _ Put the cover on _
_ Here how live that is?
You tap on it while you're putting your hand on it and you're and you're you're kind of picking more towards
the
_ neck pickup and more towards the neck
_ [Am] _ _ [Cm] _ [C] _ _ _
[E] _ _ And it does and now I don't know if the microphone is picking up but there's a subtle difference in the sound and
_ It also kind of affects the way you play plus you're not able to mute any of the strings
So you're getting this kind of sympathetic resonance of the guitar while you're [D] playing _ _
_ _ [E] _ _ [Gm] _ _ _ _
[C] And
_ _ You [G] can do it with a pick too, so
[C] _ _ _ [G] _ _ [F#] _ _
[Cm] _ _ _ _ [F] _ [A#] _ _ _
[B] _ _ [Bm] _ _ _ [G] _ _ _
[N] So anyway, there's a lot of tricks and you can tell it's old this is the best way to authenticate an old guitar _ _ _ _
_ _ Doesn't fucking [A] work.
Anyway, um another cool trick about telly is
You can use the volume obviously _
[B] _ _ [D] _ [F#] You know most famously
Probably Jeff Beck, Roy Buchanan, Danny Gatton
_ _ _ _ _ [A#m] _ _
[C#m] _ _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ _
[F#] _ _ _ _ [A] _ [E] _ _ _
_ _ _ [Bm] _ _ [Gm] _ _ _
[D#] _ _ [N] _ And they're really the most expressive instruments, you know, Leo got it right the very first time there's something _
Magical _ about a flat pole telly pick it they'll sting you
they can be as sweet as you want it to be and
_ The other thing is _ it really is a cat
I mean like you could do anything with a telecaster
It really is one of the most versatile things but it's also daunting because there's not a lot of options.
It's four sounds in it
Just plank of wood, you know less Paul that we demonstrated before
_ It's more it's it's a carved.
It's this there's like multiple woods.
This is just maple and ash and
a very simple circuit and
_ You know if you can make a gig work with one of these or an Esquire God that's that's even harder
_ _ Then you can make anything work
_ And it's really they're they're
One of the best tools you could ever [B] buy and you don't have to spend a lot of money
You could you could get one of these
You can get a squire telly put a flat pole reissue in it and you can rule the world with it.
It really is absolutely
The the go-to guitar for a lot of guitar players
I mean you just there's a video of Jeff Beck saying it's a telecaster.
It's like you can do anything with it and he was right and _ _ _ _