Telecaster build thread

[Lt. Bob]

[Greg_L]

Lookin good.

[Tadpui]

@Lt. Bob @Greg_L thanks guys, I'm really excited at how it's coming along. At this point, if I can just keep from doing anything stupid, it should come out great!

[Lt. Bob]

what's it gonna weigh?

[Tadpui]

what's it gonna weigh?

Ooh good question. I'll have to see if I can figure that out next week. All I can say now is that between the two of us that are using ash bodies, mine is noticably heavier than the other ash body. I have no idea why mine is so much more dense, but it was unmistakable when we compared last week. Hopefully it doesn't weigh as much as a thousand suns when I'm done with it.

[rayc]

Nice one Thadius.

[CeeBee]

what's it gonna weigh?

Ha a good question, it looks very solid, even for a solid body. Nice work Tad
I managed to whittle my francencaster down to 2,5kg using paulownia for the body.

[muttley]

Looking good Tad. I knew you'd knock the neck shaping out the park and enjoy it. It really isn't as tough as you think and a lot of it is hogging out once you know what you are after.

[Tadpui]

This week wasn't very interesting to show and tell. We started to wire up the electronics, but we quickly found that they'd ordered the wrong bridges, with different mounting holes than what we'd already drilled for. So we put away our control plates, pickups, and pick guards and finished up our necks.

My neck feels great, I finally got it down to where I like it. If I remember correctly it's 21mm thick at the first fret, 22 at the 6th and 23 or 23.5 at the 12th. About .5 mm thinner than the example neck that we took our measurements from. But it looks pretty amateurish in the transitions at the headstock and heel. I had to give up fussing over it. I think it feels great. It just looks a little clumsy.

Next weekend we're doing Saturday and Sunday to get these things finished. Since I'm paying for a finish, I'm going to take mine home and play it for a few weeks, then bring it back for the guy to finish.

Here are the few pics I took this week

First, this is the finish that shooting for, except in a semi transparent

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[Greg_L]

Hell yeah you're almost there!

I gotta say though....maybe it's just the pic...but that grounding tab solder blob on your volume pot doesn't look great. Might wanna touch that up before you get it all together.

[Tadpui]

Hell yeah you're almost there!

I gotta say though....maybe it's just the pic...but that grounding tab solder blob on your volume pot doesn't look great. Might wanna touch that up before you get it all together.

I can't wait, man!

Yeah it's a little of both the pic and the solder blob being weird. It's actually flattened but the pic makes it look like it's standing upright. That solder that they're having us use is very different than the cheap stuff that I'm used to. I'm not sure what the difference is, other than maybe it doesn't have a resin core. It doesn't flow very much, it kinda moves like magma out of a volcano, thick and chunky. And it doesn't get that shiny sheen when it cools, it's pretty dull grey. I've only used the cheapie stuff off of Amazon, so you could fool me when it comes to solder quality. They say it's great, but I'm unsure. The connections are friggin solid though. I can't even budge anything that I've stuck down so far. So I *think* that's good?

[Greg_L]

I can't wait, man!

Yeah it's a little of both the pic and the solder blob being weird. It's actually flattened but the pic makes it look like it's standing upright. That solder that they're having us use is very different than the cheap stuff that I'm used to. I'm not sure what the difference is, other than maybe it doesn't have a resin core. It doesn't flow very much, it kinda moves like magma out of a volcano, thick and chunky. And it doesn't get that shiny sheen when it cools, it's pretty dull grey. I've only used the cheapie stuff off of Amazon, so you could fool me when it comes to solder quality. They say it's great, but I'm unsure. The connections are friggin solid though. I can't even budge anything that I've stuck down so far. So I *think* that's good?

Yeah I'm just going off the pic. It's probably fine. I'd like to see it puddle out a bit more. The one on the cap leg doesn't look too bad.

[muttley]

I can't wait, man!

Yeah it's a little of both the pic and the solder blob being weird. It's actually flattened but the pic makes it look like it's standing upright. That solder that they're having us use is very different than the cheap stuff that I'm used to. I'm not sure what the difference is, other than maybe it doesn't have a resin core. It doesn't flow very much, it kinda moves like magma out of a volcano, thick and chunky. And it doesn't get that shiny sheen when it cools, it's pretty dull grey. I've only used the cheapie stuff off of Amazon, so you could fool me when it comes to solder quality. They say it's great, but I'm unsure. The connections are friggin solid though. I can't even budge anything that I've stuck down so far. So I *think* that's good?

Yeah I'm just going off the pic. It's probably fine. I'd like to see it puddle out a bit more. The one on the cap leg doesn't look too bad.

I always scuff up the pot and tin up well before making that joint. I also go on the side of the pot these days.

[WhiskeyJack]

Just getting caught up now dude. That thing looks like a beast. I am impressed. Super impressed that neck looks great. These guys have a heck of a class. How stoked are you right now?

How many hours in on this are you already? +/-

[Tadpui]

Today is the day! We're doing Saturday and Sunday this week to get these guitars finished up. I'm about to leave in a few minutes to go do the final setup. It's all assembled except for strap buttons and string trees. So today we'll be cutting the nut and doing all of the setup. It's got strings on it though! Every note frets out at about the 5th fret. But today I come home with an honest to goodness guitar!

Yesterday I did one uh-oh. Attaching the bridge, I broke off one of the 4 screws inside the body. The screw pilot hole had filled up with epoxy and I tried to "power" though it and broke off the screw. I wasn't going full Hulk on it or anything, and seeing the inside of the screw, it's no wonder it broke off. It's not even steel. I have no idea what it's made of. It's just chrome plated something-or-other. The guys said that they'd drill and plug the hole when they prep the body for finish. Oh and I think I've picked out my paint. Oxford Blonde Semi-Transparent seems to be my favorite, so we'll try that.

Pics to follow, either today or tomorrow.

[muttley]

Those screws are pretty standard and usually you will mess up the head before you snap the thread but either is entirely possible if you go at it wrong. Pilot every hole and you only need the thread to bite the timber so the pilot can be a fairly wide bore. A little candle wax on the thread is always a good idea both for sinking it and to get it out later if you need to. The most common breaks on those comes with the harder timbers and ash would be quite hard so.... I often keep an offcut of the body material to hand to test pilot hole size and will use one screw to cut the thread, pull it and sink a fresh new screw in the resulting tapped hole. It's easier to fill and tap a mashed hole that to pull a snapped screw. Lesson learned the same as we all did..

[muttley]

Can't wait to see and hear it.

[Tadpui]

Those screws are pretty standard and usually you will mess up the head before you snap the thread but either is entirely possible if you go at it wrong. Pilot every hole and you only need the thread to bite the timber so the pilot can be a fairly wide bore. A little candle wax on the thread is always a good idea both for sinking it and to get it out later if you need to. The most common breaks on those comes with the harder timbers and ash would be quite hard so.... I often keep an offcut of the body material to hand to test pilot hole size and will use one screw to cut the thread, pull it and sink a fresh new screw in the resulting tapped hole. It's easier to fill and tap a mashed hole that to pull a snapped screw. Lesson learned the same as we all did..

Yeah and it really broke deep down in there. Yikes! I watched a couple of videos about dealing with this situation. It looks like they used a hollow core pipe kind of thing with teeth on it, which cuts a plug of the wood around the screw and takes the whole thing out. They they cut a dowel to match the diameter of the new hole in the body and cut/sand it off flush with the body. Since it's hidden under the bridge, I wonder if they'd let me do it myself on their drill press?

[Greg_L]

It looks like they used a hollow core pipe kind of thing with teeth on it, which cuts a plug of the wood around the screw and takes the whole thing out. They they cut a dowel to match the diameter of the new hole in the body and cut/sand it off flush with the body. Since it's hidden under the bridge, I wonder if they'd let me do it myself on their drill press?

Yup that's what I'd do. Pretty simple really.

[Tadpui]

So it's finished! Well, except for the paint. I've got it at home and I've been able to play it a bunch. It's bright and aggressive sounding, it sounds like a Tele to me.

I didn't get many pics of the final couple of days' work. I was focused on getting the thing finished!

On the final weekend, we finished up soldering the electronics. If you took issue with my soldering before, you'd hate what I ended up with. It's all securely fixed in place, but boy getting all of the grounding wires onto the pot body got ugly I didn't even bother taking a photo of it before it went into the body...some things are best left hidden in a cavity, never to be seen again.

We drilled holes for the tuners, strap buttons, string tree, and pick guard. Then we set to work on doing the nut. We used bone, and they'd already cut it to a very rough shape and started the string slots with a jeweler's saw, so we didn't run the chance of messing up the string spacing. We cut the slots, snuck up on the proper depth little by little, then sanded off the excess and polished it up. Mine turned out well, except I took a tiny bit too much material off near the high E string, so it wanted to jump the slot if I bent that string at all. But then we installed the string tree for the E and B strings behind the nut and that took care of the issue. None of the strings are binding at the nut, and none of them want to jump their slot under duress. So that's a win!

Then we installed strap buttons and then set to work setting up the guitars. Pretty standard guitar tech stuff at this point. I've done some of that stuff before so at least I had an inkling of an idea of what I was doing. I didn't get the intonation nailed, but I worked on it more at home and got it closer. It could still stand a little tweak though.

I shot a video about the guitar, I'll see if I can extract some sound bytes from it and attach them here for a sound demo for those that are YT averse. Otherwise you can skip through this video to skip all of my blabbering and get to the sound demo at about the 13:00 mark



Anyways, instead of the few in-progress shots that I managed to capture, here it is at home next to its new amplifier friends. I think it's going to feel comfortable here

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