“You can get some very mournful sounds out of it as well as in‑your-face. It’s a real old battle-axe”: Gary Moore’s 1963 Telecaster is modded and thrashed to death – and it’s got a tone pot that behaves like a wah

Though Gary Moore gravitated to Gibsons for much of his work, Fenders nonetheless play a significant role in his music, including this intriguing ’63 Tele.

Acquired by Gary at some point prior to 1988, it has a ’63 body with a replacement neck and was used on the opening track of Moore’s much-loved Still Got The Blues album, a song entitled Moving On.

Steve Clarke picks up the interesting story of this modded workhorse. He begins by explaining that he initially recorded quite a mismatch in the outputs of the bridge and neck pickups, which gave readings of 6.32k and 3.59k respectively.

“What I found quickly with that Telecaster is that the front pickup seemed to be dead, but I fixed it. And I found there was a short on it that was coming from the [selector] switch.”

Despite the neck being a replacement, the frets on it are original, Steve says – putting the Tele at odds with the majority of Gary’s guitars, which were often refretted with chunkier wire.

“The Tele has 2.12mm fretwire, unlike most of his guitars, which had jumbo wire on. These look like original frets, in fact – the edges were nice and sharp, there was no over-sanding. There were none of those telltale signs that might have said to me, ‘Oh, yeah, this has had new frets.’ It was like he’d left this one as it is.”

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The only other Fender, besides Gary’s ‘Red Strat’, in the Final Encore sale, the guitar was something of a mongrel but Gary enjoyed its player-grade charms all the same, telling Guitar Buyer magazine in 2007 that “it’s got a later neck on it that someone put on before I bought it, but it’s got character and it really works.

“You can get some very mournful sounds out of it as well as a hard, in-your-face sound. It’s a real old battle-axe.” It was used on multiple appearances on German television and appears on versions of the tracks Hard Times, Thirty Days, If The Devil Made Whiskey and I Had A Dream.

Steve Clarke reports that the electronics have had minor mods, including alterations to the tone control that mean it functions rather more like the peaky sweep of a wah pedal – just another quirk of this idiosyncratic but clearly much-loved Tele.

Gary Moore's 'Workhorse' Telecaster Played By Chris Buck - YouTube

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