FS: Drinkwater Guitars Custom "Super Tele"

Emperor Guillotine

Emperor Guillotine

Active member
DESCRIPTION:
This blue Telecaster was built for me by Tom Drinkwater (formerly operating under the name Oakland Axe Factory). I originally received this guitar back in late 2017. This guitar was commissioned by me in early 2016 and completed by Tom in late 2017 right before he quit building guitars the following year.

Specs:
• Body wood: swamp ash (1.25" thickness)
• Body binding: white, top-bound
• Body finish: gloss top; satin/matte back and sides
• Scale length: 25.5" (648mm)
• Neck construction: bolt-on
• Neck wood: 1-piece maple
• Neck profile: custom, thin D
• Neck finish: oil
• Fretboard wood: flamed maple
• Fretboard radius: 20" (508mm)
• Fret number: 24
• Fretwire: Dunlop 6100 (extra-jumbo)
• Side dot markers: Luminlay (blue with black piping)
• Pickups: Bare Knuckle Holy Diver (bridge) and Bare Knuckle Cold Sweat (neck)
• Controls: 3-way toggle pickup selector, volume knob, and momentary push-button killswitch
• Bridge: Hipshot Telecaster® Retrofit Bridge (custom-made by Hipshot to fit a humbucker)
• Nut: bone
• Tuners: Hipshot Grip-Lock™ Open

A SKB semi-hard case (the 1SKB-SCFS6 model) will be included in the sale.

I have owned many guitars over the years; however, this blue Telecaster-styled build has consistently remained as the one instrument that is the easiest to play out of them all. The straight-forward combination of the super thin body, thin neck, flat fretboard, extra-jumbo fretwire, contemporary output pickups, and the complementary tonal balance between the pickups and the wood make this Telecaster build suitable for even the most technically-demanding, modern shredders.

Right now, I'm at a point where my personal tastes as a player are changing (again). So, I am shuffling around some gear.

CONDITION:
Absolutely immaculate with no damage or imperfections at all. I've taken incredibly good care of this guitar over the years.

PRICE:
$2,000 OBO + shipping

LOCATION:
East Coast, USA.
I can work with interested buyers on all shipping concerns domestically or internationally.

PHOTOS:

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CrystalSky said:
Reminds me a lot of Wirebird guitars The Safety Fire guys were playing. Would love one of those.
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The sexiest part to me is the fretwork, that looks like it plays absolutely amazing

I'm not familiar at all with the builder unfortunately, looks like he does awesome work
 
CrystalSky said:
Agreed about fretwork.

As for the builder, he was quite known in 2010s erg guitar community.


Can you please tell what happened to Tom and why he stopped building?
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That explains why I haven't heard of him, never cared at all about strandberg/etc headless guitars
 
CrystalSky said:
Reminds me a lot of Wirebird guitars The Safety Fire guys were playing. Would love one of those.
Click to expand...
I was going through a phase where I wanted a Wirebird Contour IV as well thanks to Dez and Jo of The Safety Fire and Good Tiger.

Sam Walker (the luthier behind Wirebird) has only ever built as a hobby in his free time. And as life has changed for him and taken its course, Sam slowed down on building to the point that getting an order in his book was impossible because the wait-time became simply an indefinite number of years. If you did somehow get an order placed with Sam, your estimated time until completion was just... well... whenever Sam got around to it. (I'm sure that having another kid, moving house, other life obligations, and the COVID pandemic didn't help with his turnaround times either.)

Nowadays, Sam doesn't build anymore. Wirebird no longer exists.

Back in 2016, after looking into Sam's build queue and indefinite wait-times, I figured that getting a Contour IV built by him would be impossible. So, I spent a good amount of time researching in order to determine the exact specs and measurements of a Contour IV. I even hit up an online friend who owned one at the time; and he helped me obtain accurate measurements for the body, neck, fretboard, etc. (or at least, he provided measurements as closely accurate as he could get them).

From there, I took all of my spec selections and measurements that I had gathered to Tom Drinkwater; and after a bit of back-and-forth discussion, we changed some of the specs and measurements to better suit my personal tastes in a guitar, because there were some aspects of the Wirebird Contour IV that I wasn't exactly sure I would like or jive with.

Ultimately, thanks to Tom, along with a little help from Kevin Fast (formerly of Fast Guitars) who was subcontracted out to help with the initial cutting and shaping of the guitar, I ended up with a superior instrument that is (in my opinion) a better version of a Wirebird Contour IV.

CrystalSky said:
As for the builder, he was quite known in 2010s erg guitar community.
Click to expand...
Correct. Oakland Axe Factory had a truly wonderful reputation amongst the extended range guitar community back in the early-to-mid 2010s. I never heard a single negative word about Tom on the forums, period.

CrystalSky said:
Can you please tell what happened to Tom and why he stopped building?
Click to expand...
Being a luthier in the USA nowadays provides an absolutely abysmal level of income. The return just isn't worth it financially for pretty much everyone, which is why we have been seeing less and less luthiers with private shops building their own stuff in the USA since the 2010s as more and more established builders just end up calling it quits. (Think for a moment about when was the last time that you read something online about a new, hyped luthier with his own private shop making waves in the USA guitar market. Been quite a long while, hasn't it?)

Tom has a family to provide for, including two kids who have special needs disabilities. So, he began doing other types of woodworking (mainly furniture, if I recall correctly) plus doing basic musical instrument repair/tech stuff at a shop in order to make a living for himself and his family. No time to build. And even if he did have time, it wouldn't be worth the return financially for him and his family.

DanTravis62 said:
That explains why I haven't heard of him, never cared at all about strandberg/etc headless guitars
Click to expand...
Tom did way more than that under both his Oakland Axe Factory brand and his Drinkwater Guitars brand.

But yes, Tom was mainly known for his original Falcon headless model as well as his contracted tenure of building the guitars for designer Eric Lovett's XEN brand of ergonomic instruments.
 
Emperor Guillotine said:
I was going through a phase where I wanted a Wirebird Contour IV as well thanks to Dez and Jo of The Safety Fire and Good Tiger.

Sam Walker (the luthier behind Wirebird) has only ever built as a hobby in his free time. And as life has changed for him and taken its course, Sam slowed down on building to the point that getting an order in his book was impossible because the wait-time became simply an indefinite number of years. If you did somehow get an order placed with Sam, your estimated time until completion was just... well... whenever Sam got around to it. (I'm sure that having another kid, moving house, other life obligations, and the COVID pandemic didn't help with his turnaround times either.)

Nowadays, Sam doesn't build anymore. Wirebird no longer exists.

Back in 2016, after looking into Sam's build queue and indefinite wait-times, I figured that getting a Contour IV built by him would be impossible. So, I spent a good amount of time researching in order to determine the exact specs and measurements of a Contour IV. I even hit up an online friend who owned one at the time; and he helped me obtain accurate measurements for the body, neck, fretboard, etc. (or at least, he provided measurements as closely accurate as he could get them).

From there, I took all of my spec selections and measurements that I had gathered to Tom Drinkwater; and after a bit of back-and-forth discussion, we changed some of the specs and measurements to better suit my personal tastes in a guitar, because there were some aspects of the Wirebird Contour IV that I wasn't exactly sure I would like or jive with.

Ultimately, thanks to Tom, along with a little help from Kevin Fast (formerly of Fast Guitars) who was subcontracted out to help with the initial cutting and shaping of the guitar, I ended up with a superior instrument that is (in my opinion) a better version of a Wirebird Contour IV.


Correct. Oakland Axe Factory had a truly wonderful reputation amongst the extended range guitar community back in the early-to-mid 2010s. I never heard a single negative word about Tom on the forums, period.


Being a luthier in the USA nowadays provides an absolutely abysmal level of income. The return just isn't worth it financially for pretty much everyone, which is why we have been seeing less and less luthiers with private shops building their own stuff in the USA since the 2010s as more and more established builders just end up calling it quits. (Think for a moment about when was the last time that you read something online about a new, hyped luthier with his own private shop making waves in the USA guitar market. Been quite a long while, hasn't it?)

Tom has a family to provide for, including two kids who have special needs disabilities. So, he began doing other types of woodworking (mainly furniture, if I recall correctly) plus doing basic musical instrument repair/tech stuff at a shop in order to make a living for himself and his family. No time to build. And even if he did have time, it wouldn't be worth the return financially for him and his family.


Tom did way more than that under both his Oakland Axe Factory brand and his Drinkwater Guitars brand.

But yes, Tom was mainly known for his original Falcon headless model as well as his contracted tenure of building the guitars for designer Eric Lovett's XEN brand of ergonomic instruments.
Click to expand...
Wow! Thank you for such an elaborate answer man!
 
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