Back in 2017–2018, I set out to design and build my own electric guitar as a final high school project, The Thelecaster. Inspired by the Fender Telecaster, its body shape takes cues from Fender’s 2012 Voyager concept [1], which later evolved into the now-popular Meteora. Unintentionally, I found myself working in parallel with Fender’s own design direction, which added an unexpected relevance to the project.
I wanted to push the design further with a few novel touches. The guitar features a fanned fret layout, offering varied scale lengths per string, great for tonal clarity and especially for downtuning the lower strings. I also designed an LED-based pickup indicator system with a unique blend function, allowing players to fine-tune their tone by blending the neck and bridge pickups depending on the current selection. Except for the fretboard, I built everything myself, from shaping the body to wiring the electronics. A true one-off.
[1] https://www.themusiczoo.com/blogs/news/larry-s-lab-fender-voyager-concept