Jack White takes you on a guided tour of his tricked-out Three-Wheel Motion Low Rider Fender Telecaster
Is this the craziest Tele ever assembled?
Jack White has had a remarkably busy lockdown. If he’s not releasing a ground-breaking new octave pedal, he’s paying tribute to EVH on SNL, or buying guitars for buskers. And now, the 21st-century guitar hero has posted a new video that further cements his workaholic credentials, showcasing his perpetual work in progress: the Three-Wheel Motion Low Rider Fender Telecaster.
As the video above explains, the guitar began life as a B-Bender Telecaster given to White as a gift, but he soon began efforts to change it beyond recognition to suit his playing with the Raconteurs.
Fender Custom Shop builder Chip Ellis was the man tasked with making White’s dreams a reality, and boy, did he have a task ahead of him.
Aside from the fact that it already has a built-in B-bender – where shifting the strap bends the B string only – the Low Rider’s USP is an after-market Hipshot B-bender bridge, which adds an additional G and high E bender, as well as a switch that drops the low E down to a D.
The pickup configuration is unusual, too: a Lace Sensor single coil in the bridge, middle-position P-90 and a humbucker taken from a Fender Telecaster Thinline – most likely a Wide Range.
Despite the tonal potential, White opts to keep things simple with a three-way selector switch, while a kill switch is also on hand for stutter effects.
The guitar’s second iteration replaces much of the black hardware with white versions, adds an extended Cabronita pickguard, moves the killswitch and removes the E-bender. Just a few changes, then.
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You can hear the Telecaster’s unique bending action on The Raconteurs’ Somedays (I Don’t Feel Like Trying) below.
Who knows what it will look like next…
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Mike is Editor-in-Chief of GuitarWorld.com, in addition to being an offset fiend and recovering pedal addict. He has a master's degree in journalism from Cardiff University, and over a decade's experience writing and editing for guitar publications including MusicRadar, Total Guitar and Guitarist, as well as 20 years of recording and live experience in original and function bands. During his career, he has interviewed the likes of John Frusciante, Chris Cornell, Tom Morello, Matt Bellamy, Kirk Hammett, Jerry Cantrell, Joe Satriani, Tom DeLonge, Ed O'Brien, Polyphia, Tosin Abasi, Yvette Young and many more. In his free time, you'll find him making progressive instrumental rock under the nom de plume Maebe.
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