Grosh TME Spec NOS Retro TB Aged Vintage Natural/TimeWorn

A TME-spec'd Grosh NOS Retro with a Tele bridge, brass saddles, and a Tele bridge pickup, in Aged Vintage Natural over swamp ash.

Plenty of players love nearly everything about a Strat but miss the snap and bite of a Tele bridge pickup. Just as many Tele players would happily trade their slab body for a set of contours, a middle pickup, and those in-between positions. The NOS Retro TB is the guitar we asked Don Grosh to build for both of them.

It starts from Grosh's NOS Retro, his refined take on the classic S-style guitar, with a true S body shape and vintage-style routing. For the TB, Grosh cut a custom pickguard and routed the body to take a Tele bridge assembly in place of the vibrato: an aged Gotoh vintage-style T bridge with brass saddles, and Grosh's GT Tele bridge pickup. The neck and middle positions keep Grosh's own 60's Fat single coils, wound in-house.

On the bridge pickup alone, you get the twang, snap, and bite of a proper Tele bridge. The neck and middle positions give you the chime and warmth Grosh's 60's Fat pickups are known for. The real surprise is bridge and middle together. On a traditional Strat, that combination is fat and clucky, but it can also be a little dark and wooly. With the Tele pickup in the pair, it stays open, airy, and twangy, a quack that cuts through for clean rhythm, country chicken pickin', and funk alike. Grosh's blend control, which takes the place of a second tone knob, adds pickup combinations beyond the five switch positions, so there is a lot more here than five sounds (ie, you can get just the bridge and neck pickups together, or all three pickups, etc...).

The feel is pure Grosh. The one-piece maple neck has his medium/large roundback carve, .850" at the first fret filling out to .950" at the twelfth, on a 10" radius with medium 6150 frets and a 1 5/8" nut. Timeworn Level 2 aging on the aged satin lacquer makes it feel broken in from the first time you pick it up, and Don's fretwork is as clean as anything we see come through the shop. With a fixed bridge and locking Klusons, bends stay put and the TB holds its tuning through a long night.

An Aged Vintage Natural Timeworn finish over swamp ash, letting the character of the wood come through, paired with an aged white 3-ply pickguard, aged white knobs and pickup covers, and aged nickel hardware. It is a warm, understated look that suits the guitar's hybrid personality.