Fender Album Of Stars Promotional Magazine c. 1968

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• When I worked at Karen's Music in Urbana, we had a little production line for these Telecaster copies we made. We wound up making about twenty complete guitars and another five or six replacement necks and quite a few bridges we sold, but what relates to the above is that we had a guy come in with one of those 335-looking things that wanted a special twelve string neck made for it. We did, he wanted it almost two inches at the nut and with some odd fret markers, and what he did was to tune the pairs of strings to fifths, fourths or other intervals instead of in unison. A few years later we had a book come through that I happened to notice called "The Axelrod Axe System" which was a tutorial on how to do just that. The customer's name was not Axelrod, though, which I would have remembered because I was a salt water fish tank buff and an Axelrod was overwhelmingly the biggest author of fish hobby books at that time. I never did find out any more as to what the relation was or if the two were a case of synchronous invention. Then again, I have never met anyone else that heard of the Axelrod Axe method either.

  We started building our own Teles because Fender had a huge backlog on them and because the quality had dropped to where we figured we could build a whole guitar in not much more time than making the crap Fender put out work right. We used only 50+ year old wood from University of Illinois salvaged furniture and doors for the body and our necks were all three piece laminated walnut and maple. Fender found out and told us that if we continued our dealership was gone, so we quit even though we did not infringe Fender's trademarks. We DID copy the pre-CBS Strat peg head and they specifically admitted in a letter that we were not in violation of trademark. If I could find that letter that would probably enable someone to bust Fender's claim of trademark status on their pegheads today, but sadly all the store's records went to the landfill in 1982.

  If only I had known!

  • thanks for the interesting comment, Jerry...assuming that is yr real name... i checked out that 'axelrod axe' book, it sounds right up my alley, unfortunately the only copy online is $36 on Aamzon. Can anyone tell me what the tuning system was, or anything else about it? Also funny that wishbone ash and thin lizzy don't get mentioned, I always think of them first rE: harmonized gtr leads... c.

• No, it's a nickname I picked up.....how,we won't get into, but a 'jeroboam' is a wine bottle about twice the size of a magnum. Also known, not surprisingly, as a double magnum.

  There is a whole spectrum of sizes with latin or biblical sounding names. The magnum is the largest you usually see in a liquor store, except as a display piece. Bigger quantities of wine today tend to come in boxed plastic bags.

  Axelrod's book is extremely rare with only one or two in libraries and I have never seen another in a store inventory, but it's not in demand either. I think few people were even willing to try it because you have to modify a 12 string guitar somewhat, a new nut at least. Someone said he might rerelease it but I have no idea.