There are great looking guitars and then there are handbuilt Teye guitars. After devoting 25 years of his life to Flamenco, playing with the Joe Ely band, using Zemaitis electrics and Manuel Reyes acoustic instruments Teye has taken his pursuit of sound focus, his experience, and life-knowledge to handbuild a range of custom guitars that exceed expectations in material, sound and aesthetics.
Handmade Custom Guitars
Teye makes his handmade guitars and basses according to three pricing levels – each with it’s own level of sophistication, adornment and feature sets. The vision behind each guitar is identical – these are all unapologetically serious guitars built according to a long European and American stringed instrument heritage. With as much an emphasis upon beauty and design as well as upon tone and feel Teye’s custom guitars emerge victorious in comparison with the most prized vintage classics.
Handmade Custom Electric Gypsy Guitars
Teye’s Guitars combine the turquoise accents of the Native American Southwest with a wild and florid Spanish New World and vivid gypsy flavour. The borders of the guitars recall Cordoban and Vaquero artisanry whilst the tight curves of the body echo the Moorish architecture of Andalucia. While the use of aluminum contributes to the sound, the intricately crafted designs used on the aluminum make every guitar an especially expressive and visually stunning piece of artwork. The A-Series guitars are completely engraved by hand, and custom work is available.
Aluminium Mahogany and Engraving & Acoustic Tuning
Teye uses an ancient technique learnt from sculptor Russ Thayer in which the mahogany pores aren’t filled but rather bridged. The extra time and effort is well worth it. The A- and the E-series feature a combination of French Polish and varnish (“barniz” or “bernstein”). I caress it on by hand to achieve a beautiful deep satin shine. Not too much, not too little, and quite different from the usual high gloss electric guitar finish. The A-Series guitar bodies are domed and acoustically designed to eliminate any dead notes and wolf tones and tuned to a specific interval, to create a ring that makes each well tuned piece of Teye guitar mahogany unique.
Pick ups & Unique Guitar Tone filters
Teye houses his pickups in a specifically designed and engraved ring / housing and uses the famed high clarity humbucker pick ups of guitar luthier Jason Lollar as well as DiMarzio pickups. The guitar electronics are extremely versatile yet simple to operate. Teye ignored everything that could be ignored about existing guitar wisdom, except the idea of feeding great pickups straight into your amp. With all knobs on “10″, his unique filtering is NOT engaged. Rolling off the treble ingeniously repositions the peak of the frequency curve, whilst the MOOD knob allows the thickness of the guitar tone to be manipulated. This combination of twin tone filters allows a rich and vibrant versatile and multicoloured palette of sonics unique to these guitars. If you like your guitar signal pure these guitars use NO pre-amps or active electronics.
Teye Guitars Website
