Artful Selection

With the Telstar, Gene Baker’s b3 Guitars delivers the best of the Big F’s top two timeless models.

- By Dave Hunter

GENE BAKER'S CAREER is the stuff of legend. After apprenticing under fabled luthier Roger Giffin, head of Gibson's West Coast Custom Shop, for two years, he moved to the Fender Custom Shop in Corona in 1993, during its Golden Age, where he quickly rose to the position of senior master builder. In 2003, he launched b3 Guitars, bringing his own fully custom models to players. Through it all, Baker has continually garnered respect for blending original and forward-looking esthetics with a clear respect for classic elements in models that include his custom-grade SL, Phoenix, Ultra Modern and Ringmaster.

These models returned to the market with the opening of Baker's new workshop in Tehachapi, California, in January 2020, with promotional and administration support from his business partner, guitar-industry veteran Michael Brandt Rinkenberger. Now they're joined by his latest creation: the Telstar, a clever 50/50 marriage of the Big F's two most timeless models.

First developed by Baker in 2009 for another project, and thoroughly updated and upgraded for 2022, the Telstar has a body carved to the iconic S-style curves on its bass side, with a slab-bodied T-style creation on the treble side. The four-bolt neck attachment and 25 12-inch scale length suit both inspirations, of course, but pickups are split between S-style single-coils in the neck and middle positions and a slightly fatter T-style in the bridge, with 10-position switching and a clever vibrato unit that blends the bridge archetypes from both models. And for all that, as simple as the splicing might seem, the final result represents much more than the sum of its parts.