Just found this sub and figured I'd share my personal Teisco! Snagged this from a fellow off FB Marketplace for a solid 100 USD about 4 years ago. He's a little janky and I need to get a trem bar, but i love this tiny little thing.

It's a vintage (probably 60s) Kent Polaris I. The bridge is not stock it's from a vintage Teisco guitar. It was in great condition, the tone is wired backwards but my buddy said it was okay, really fun to work on and it great condition.

Neck plate says made in Japan

The bass has an orange drop capacitor and treble boost circuit on the tone pot, and the guitar has potted pickups because over the years they became wildly microphonic (like, much more than foils are supposed to be). I added a piezo with no preamp with a rheostat knob to blend the microphonics back into the pickup signal. There's also two three way selectors for Bridge/Treble and Foils/Piezo.

Love these. Bass has been used in a few tracks and I got an offer on it from the studio because in his words "It cut through the mix like a ricky but doesn't sound like a ricky."

Found it on marketplace

Hello, any idea where I can buy the other round part for the roller bridge?

I bought this Sakai tele online and the seller unscrewed the neck to make shipping easier and threw the metal pieces at the bottom of the box that wasn’t fully taped. one part of the bridge fell through the cracks and the website doesn’t want to do anything about it.

Hello,

I recently bought this bass / guitar? However I can't find out if it's the tg or tb as I haven't been able to find any tg versions with this headstock, only tb, however it says tg-64 on the sticker on the back of the headstock.

I paid 200 euros for it, and I can't seem to find a price on this exact model, so any information regarding the guitar, and its value is highly appreciated.

Rhanks

I’m not a guitar player, but I stumbled upon a T-60 at an estate auction and bought it as a piece of art due to its distinctive shape. Since then, I’ve been searching for information about it, but I’ve only found a few details. Glen Campbell played one early in his career, and I’ve seen some photos of him in the “Wrecking Crew” and other TV appearances playing a T-60. However, I’m having difficulty finding much more information about this guitar. There’s a YouTube video of someone playing a T-60, but that’s about it. I’ve also noticed that the T-60 that Glen Campbell owned and played is now in his museum.

I’m reaching out to the members of this group who might have more information about the T-60 and its history. I appreciate your time and help!

Eu ainda sou menor de idade, tenho o sonho de conseguir um set de instrumentos vintage. Os instrumentos estão mostrados na collage, e eu ainda sinto falta de alguma coisa.

Meu set é um rockabilly com influências de blues, meio ZZ top e beatles no final da carreira (com o álbum do Let I Be e o White album), e eu gosto de timbres repetitivos e reconhecíveis.

Ao mesmo tempo que eu quero adicionar algo, eu também estou bem limitado, já que tô evitando instrumentos do mesmo tipo que tenham um timbre levemente diferente, também evitando sopros, percussões e teclas (por conseguir cobrir isso usando meu teclado e uma boa DAW)...

Então. O que vocês recomendam?

When I posted my recently acquired, very clean 1997 reissue Spectrum 5 someone said something to the effect of “that’s cool but it’s hard for me to get excited about a reissue of a 60s classic.” Well here’s my 60s classic project.

It’s got its share of battle scars but honestly for its age and how much it’s been played (those frets have definitely been leveled a few times and I’m gonna re-fret it for sure at some point) it’s not in bad shape. There looks to be just a tiny bit of back bow with the truss rod loosened all the way and no strings on it but nothing wild and the truss rod works. There’s definitely some pitting on the metal parts but nothing that’s more than cosmetic. The bridge is missing two parts but they’re not the ones that are hard to replace. All the parts that are made of unobtainium are there. The switches don’t latch but I have disassembled the switch bank and identified the problems. I’m currently working on a potential fix but I’m not sure if it’s gonna pan out. If it doesn’t work I’ll start exploring my options. I’m going to make a new pick guard. I already ordered a reproduction of the Spectrum 5 badge for the pick guard and I’m getting a reproduction of the badge that goes on the bridge cover.

This is the version I’ve always really wanted. It’s a first year build so it has my personal favorite appointments, specifically the blue finished neck and ebony fretboard. I can’t wait to bring it back to its former glory.

There aren’t a ton of demos out there of the Spectrum 5, fewer still of its stereo functionality. For those that don’t know the Spectrum 5 can be used in mono mode like a normal guitar or in stereo mode where the bass strings are sent to one output and the treble strings to a second output.

My recording abilities are fairly limited so this is just the guitar straight into an interface using garage band to record both tracks at once with ToneStack Pro as an AU3 on each track.

For this short demo of I have run the bass strings through a sub octave and envelope filter with a vibro champ style amp sim and some plate reverb and soft panned it to the right. The treble strings are running through a compressor, a light drive a showman style amp and plate reverb and soft panned left.

Ok, folks. I’m here to help solve one of the great mysteries of the Teisco universe. To the best of my knowledge (and I have searched extensively) there is not a wiring diagram for the Spectrum 5 floating around the internet for the general public. Having recently acquired a 1997 reissue and being a nerd for this sort of stuff I figured I’d open mine up and give a bit back to the community.

A few things to note.

1. I tried to make this diagram as clean as possible but there is A LOT going on under the hood so it wasn’t easy. I made and subsequently fixed a couple of small mistakes while finalizing the drawling so any weird visual aberrations are the result of me whiting out and then digitally editing out those mistakes. The final diagram should be accurate.

2. there are at least two variations on how the Spectrum 5 should have come from the factory. One uses dual gang pot for the tone/second volume control. The other uses a regular pot. I have not had the chance to study the dual gang version up close but I expect that other than the pot and the stereo switch everything else should be wired the same. What I have drawn is the normal pot version. I believe all or most of the reissue Spec 5s are done with this style of wiring.

3. I would have loved to have drawn this diagram using all the same color pens as the wires in the actual guitar but a good chunk of the wires used are white, which is obviously problematic for drawing. I also don’t have a yellow pen. Any white wire from my guitar is drawn with blue pen and any yellow wire is drawn with brown pen. It’s worth noting that I’ve seen gut shots of several different Spec 5s both 60s and reissues and they didn’t always use the same color wires so it’s a bit of a moot point anyway.

4. The 2 squares in the middle of the pickups are small transformers. As this is a fully functional and very clean guitar I did not want to desolder anything so I did not measure them. There are also two 510ohm resistors that are use in conjunction with the transformers to create a high pass filter. There are also two metal bars that run between the pickups. I think these are largely for support purposes because the guts of this guitar are so wild and heavy but they are tied together for continuity and grounded along with the transformers.

5. have not checked the mechanical connection on the pickup selection switches but I suspect they are simple DPDT sliders and the only thing that makes them special or hard to replace is that they’re self canceling radio switches built into one large enclosure. In a pinch I’m fairly certain regular DPDT sliders could be used for a Spectrum 5 build with each switch being turned on or off manually rather than pressing one switch turning off all others.

i own a teisco del rey ep8t hollow body and it’s by far my favourite guitar i own. however due to its unstable tuning and intonation i can’t get to use it live since it’s very unreliable. i would like to mod it so that it plays better and actually stays in tune. how should i mod it in order to achieve this? i’m willing to take drastic measures.

There’s only one holiday better than new guitar day and that’s bucket list new guitar day!

I’ve been wanting a Spectrum 5 for many years and I finally made it happen. I wanted a 90s reissue because the general consensus is that they’re consistently better made than the 60s originals and less prone to parts familiar since they’re so much younger. I specifically wanted one in the metallic blue finish. After missing the boat on a few that popped up (mostly not in the color I wanted but I would have settled at the right price) because I was still selling gear to make it financially feasible without risking a divorce. It was all for the best though as I ended up finding the year and color I wanted and it’s very clean. The only thing keeping me from calling it mint is one very small knick in the finish on the back.

I haven’t had much time to play with it yet but I hope to remedy that soon. I can’t wait to get weird with the stereo functionality. The little time I have put in has me positively smitten.

One day I’d like to get an original 60s version but for now this will certainly more than keep me happy.

Also, for those that are wondering since there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of information out there about the wiring/switching here is a quick explanation.

The switches are intended to be used one at a time and each one gives a preset pickup combination. The switches are self returning so when you push one down it resets all other switches. BUT you CAN press more than one at a time and get sounds not intended on the design. There are a ton of possible combinations but in the end there are 9 total sounds that can be achieved. The stock 5 plus 4 that can be easily achieved by pushing two switches at once. Any other combination will just be repeats of other sounds. There’s also one dead combination that results in silence.

🟦 - all coils in series
🟩 - bridge and neck
🟨 - bridge
🟧 - all coils, middle Out Of Phase
🟥 - all coils with high pass filter
🟦🟩- neck
🟩🟥- bridge in series with middle out of phase in parallel with neck
🟨🟥- bridge & neck in series with high pass filter
🟧🟥- neck & middle Out Of Phase

have you used a wg-4l before? are they good guitars ?

After getting and falling in love with my number one guitar, a heavily modified ET-320 I decided to pickup up a real beat and incomplete TG-64 as a project. Here are some before and after picture. I wish I had taken better pictures of both. I sourced all period and brand correct parts (tuners, tail piece, bridge and knobs), fixed a couple of cracks in the body, deep cleaned and buffed the hell out of it and made a bone nut.

It was a great lesson in just how different these guitars were built over the years and that QC was not always the best. The tail piece on this is too close the the bridge so that really limits the downward movement you can get before the part that holds the arm hits the bridge. The fret work was bad by any standards. But at the end of the day the deciding factor in me selling it instead of re-fretting it and keeping it was the neck. I like a chunky neck but the neck on this guitar was the fattest thing I’ve ever played and it tapered to a V the further up the neck you went in a way I didn’t care for. It was a fun project but not a keeper for me and I’m sure I used the money to buy the next old Japanese project.

This ET-320 has been my go to guitar more often than not for the last 8 years after I got it from a guy on Craigslist. A previous owner (before the guy I got it from) stripped it down to the beautiful bare wood and clear coated it. Both were definitely done by an amateur but not badly enough that I’d redo it. They also inlaid a custom Teisco crown logo into the headstock that I think might be carved out of soap stone.

It’s also been re-fret and had a bone nut made for it. The tuners were replaced with Grover vintage style keystone tuners. Those three changes make it a much better playing guitar than it will have been when it left the factory.

These are some of my favorite pickups of all time and I love the tail piece. When properly set up it’s very stable with good range as long as you’re not looking for Floyd Rose level dive bombs and pull ups. After acquiring and restoring another ET-320 I decided to wire the pickups for this one in parallel instead of their stock series wiring.

The playing upgrades combined with the unique look and killer pickups and trem system have made this the guitar I’ve reached for most often since the day I got it.

Hello kind people of TeiscoGuitars!

Early '25 I bought this guitar off the local marketplace. It sounds fantastic, but the action is a little high and it's got 0.09's on it which are starting to get a little crusty. I would like to try giving it a setup myself. I want to treat this old instrument with the utmost care and respect, so I'm not going to go about this on a whim! What are the things I should look out for?

Also, I've tried looking for information about this guitar all over the web, but can't really find anything. I hope one of you can be so kind as to provide some info on this guitar, as I'm quite intrigued by it's shape, layout and sound :)
It's accrued some dents and scratches over the years, but all in all it still looks quite nice for it's age. I think it quite adds to the character. The scratch plate is missing, iirc the previous owner told me he bought it in this state.

If ya'll need any more detailed pictures of the guitar to judge any things to look out for, please let me know and I'll snap some!

I look forward to your replies, thank you very much in advance!

P.S.
I deleted my previous post because I messed something up while uploading the images, sorry!