Zelda 25th Anniversary Telecaster

   To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the original NES game The Legend of Zelda I created a gold telecaster with LED accents in the pickguard and fretboard. The Steve Vai “tree of life” inlay was pre-made by a CNC shop on eBay that used to sell them. I felt the vines coalesced with the leafy-green nature of Zelda in general. In the body of the golden beast lies a single custom Rumpelstiltskin pickup wound to a naughty 13k resistance. The Triforce lights up as do the side markers which were installed with strands of fiber optic filament–learned from an old article on Talkbass. A nice curly maple board was shaped into the neck and adorned with custom black and gold waterslide decals. The arcade button embedded in the pickguard acts as a kill switch for Pol’s Voice level shenanigans.

  I’ll never forget the first time I played The Legend of Zelda. It had to be a Wednesday sometime in the fall of 1987 when I was in 6th grade. My friend’s older brother recommended the game–if he hadn’t I might not have picked the game up for years. Zelda’s TV commercial was weird and it’s box art was also rather nondescript, however the back of the box promised “mystical labyrinths of the underworld,” “heart pounding adventure” and some little dude with a sword and shield. Maps were needed? I was hella intrigued. Younger people may laugh at the graphics but hey, that’s all we had back then and the visuals relied more on your imagination. It was indeed a long, amazing adventure through Hyrule and I was so enthralled that I skipped school Thursday, Friday and Monday–all to play and beat Zelda on a crazy 32 inch tube TV with the big-ass map and ice cold Kool-Aid in tow. I think I actually called the Nintendo Help line once that weekend and felt like a total dick.