The Smith Family Melobar Guitar - the real story of Melobar from Ted Smith - melobarted@gmail.com

Saturday, November 10, 2018

Randy Patton and his new Telobar "ole Yeller"

Randy Patton is the proud owner of Ole Yeller a doubleneck Telobar that we look forward to seeing him use on stage. We don't have a lot of photos of how comfortable they are to stand up and play, Randy adapted to it immediately. This one was a MIM Tele on top with a Teleratt on the bottom.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlDOW12a5-A

Telobar in the Band  https://www.facebook.com/rpfarrier/videos/pcb.10212989321544775/10212989307544425/?type=3&theater

Buying a Telobar

The double neck Standard and Melobar is a cool guitar. To get into one there are a couple things to consider.
One is that you really are buying two guitars, if you start with a $450 used MIM Tele, it has to be stripped, chopped, laminated to a lower blank, re-routered (hand router the lower body too), then assembled so the electronics work from the upper bout to the Melobar control panel. There are often over $832 in parts before you count any labor or finish work. That brings them up to the $1,800 level in price.

A lot of guys have stated they'd like to buy one but would like to try it out and use it to see if they want to pay that kind of price. So we have tried to come up with ways to help you into one at a do-able price.

Here are some Options:

You can send in your own "donor" Tele that you have laying around but don't use much which will cut that initial cost out. Send it to us and we will do the rest. That can bring the price down considerably from $350 to $500 depending on how complete you want it.

Build your own kit - you can buy a guitar that is the complete "bones" in primer and you paint it and assemble as you want it, which opens the door to a lot of customizing which is cool to do. Again price ranges on what the upper standard cost but it can cut the cost in half ranging from $385 to $900 on a top of the line that just needs to be painted and assembled.


Hope that helps you get into one, there are only about 9 necks left and then this era is over.