More Telescapades....(Part III) V 2.0 8-18-23 New Demo added

MichaelW

MichaelW

Well-known member
ok LAST tele thread, I SWEAR! (maybe....heh)

This one may be out a ways as I need a custom pickguard cut for it. And Warmoth is not known for speediness......

The special pickguard route is for these.......

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I've been wanting to built a tele around the Lollar Charlie Christian pickups for a long time.
Well I guess the time is now.

Yet another MJT body.....this was pretty interesting to me. It's an f-hole thin line tele but with a control plate. It's a "Merle Haggard" style layout.
This one is Swamp Ash.

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This is not my pic but the Ebay pics but you get an idea of how it will look when done.
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I'm going to have to route the neck pickup position to accept the CC pickup. But I won't do that until I get the pickguard to make sure everything lines up.

Here's the neck, it's a Warmoth neck. 59 neck carve, straight 10" radius. Neck carve feels really nice but I still think it could be a bit bigger. I think it's .86" under the first fret.

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Since this was a raw neck I decided to shoot a nitro finish on it. I started out with StewMac's "Aged Clear". Which turned out to be pretty dark.
I did not shoot a coat of sanding sealer first. Which was a mistake. Some of the color coat sank into the grain pores.

First I sanded it down to 400
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Color coats....

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It's darker than I intended but it looks good to me. I topped it off with a couple light coats of clear satin nitro.
Working on the headstock decal now.

More to come.....
 
Well this one will make 6, and it's my last Tele for a while.

My last day in my current job is next Friday. So these are my "last hurrah" for while. Until I start generating from income again at least hahah.
 
MichaelW said:
Well this one will make 6, and it's my last Tele for a while.

My last day in my current job is next Friday. So these are my "last hurrah" for while. Until I start generating from income again at least hahah.
Click to expand...
generate income by selling your pedals, you can't possibly be using all of them, especially with absolutely no labels under the knobs :)
 
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Well the neck is done, although it came out a lot darker than I expected it to. And a bit splotchy.

I probably won't try to use tinted or colored lacquers from a rattle can again. Not without springing for the special nozzles that they sell.
Really difficult to get even coverage without putting on too much color. Or, I just kinda suck at spraying lacquer..... :ROFLMAO: .

I should have done this with an airbrush and mixed my own tint.

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My custom pickguard has shipped, so hopefully next week I can make some more significant progress on this guitar. I think I have everything else. Waiting on a set of 500k solid shaft pots too.

I worked on the bridge plate today. Decided to try to go a little lighter with the aging this time.

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Same process, less time and less aggressive scuffing.
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The Lollar BS pickup that matches the Charlie Christian neck is a HUGE sucker. Here it is with my aged saddles, ready to be installed.
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More to come.....
 
Worked on the rest of the hardware today.

This time I started with the "Gotoh Relic" series hardware. I've used these before and don't find them to be very aged at all.
It looks like regular chrome plated hardware with some light scratches as opposed to "aged".

The only reason I used them was because AES had the knobs I wanted and it was easier to consolidate the order for all the hardware from one source.

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I was "hoping" that these would have been pre-scuffed so I initially tried to apply the echtant without scuffing. It didn't work. The plating was still too uniform. So I would up having to do some light scuffing. Instead of the Dremel I used some 1500 grit sandpaper so it would be less deep and more uniform. Not sure it really worked.

I also decided to leave the string ferrules as they were because I like the way they look with the patina on them.

The process that I've documented in my other builds, some light scuffing, then apply PCB echtant (Ferric Chloride acid) under a singly ply of tissue.

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So these came out with the least amount of oxidation of all my experiments so far. I still haven't quite cracked the code to getting the uniformity I want (without resorting to hydrochloric acid and fuming the parts).
Still I kinda like how these came out. They should match the level of aging on the Thinline body they're going on.
The electrosocket jack cup looks shockingly bright and shiny in comparison.

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I have two pick guards on the way. One with pick guard mount with 3 screws for the Charlie Christian and one with no screws for a body mount. I have a feeling I'm going to like the cleaner look of the body mount although it may take some fiddling to get the pickup height adjusted to where it's optimal.

More to come......
 
Time to whack the wood.....this is always a bit of a sphincter clencher for me to do on a finished body. I don't do enough woodworking these days to be really be comfortable with this process although I do know my way around a router from my cabinet shop days (a lifetime ago).

The Charlie Christian neck body route is generally the shape of a P90 but with ever so slightly larger dimensions by a few mil in all directions.
I used a P90 template and move it a couple of times to get the right size. I indexed off of the leading edge of the front pickup cavity.

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Multiple passes taking about 3/16th off at a time.
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I also needed to deepen the route to 7/8th to accommodate the rather large pickup. Dry fitting here to make sure the cavity fits.
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Painted with shielding paint. I've read that the CC's are fairly noisy single coils. Making me second guess whether putting it into a semi hollow is a good idea or not since there's no way for my to shield the control cavity as it's part of the semi hollow on the lower side.

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More to come.......
 
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Ok, strung her up, intontated and initial set up while I wait for the final piece to arrive.

I ran into two issues:

1) The Lollar BS bridge pickup is pretty massive. It's bottoming out in the cavity and with my setup it's leaving me about 6/64 under the low E string and 5/64 under the high E. It "may" be ok. I have no experience with these pickups so I have no idea where I'm going to like it.

If I need to lower it anymore I'm going to have to route the bridge cavity down a bit more. But I won't know until I wire it up and play it a bit.

2) I ran into this issue with the last Warmoth neck I used. I think they do this on purpose so you'll order the neck with their $30 nut install up charge. Bastards....heh. But the nut slot is about 1/32nd deeper than standard. So NONE of my pre-cut nuts fit. They're all too low.
I have a small ebony shim in there right now but I'm probably going to have to cut a new nut from a blank.....sigh.....

The neck pocket fit was pretty tight, I had to sand the nitro I shot onto the neck heel back to bare almost bare wood to get it to fit. But the alignment was perfect.

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Well as of last Friday I am officially unemployed.

All good, it was an amicable and mutual exit and I received a healthy severance package. Planning on taking a sabbatical, which I've been wanting to do for a couple of years now.

Nevertheless, I'll be on a fixed income until I find another job and I don't plan to even start looking until at LEAST July or thereabouts.

Aside from the couple of guitar projects that are already "in flight" there's going to a "slow down" on building anything new for a while:)
 
MichaelW said:
Well as of last Friday I am officially unemployed.

All good, it was an amicable and mutual exit and I received a healthy severance package. Planning on taking a sabbatical, which I've been wanting to do for a couple of years now.

Nevertheless, I'll be on a fixed income until I find another job and I don't plan to even start looking until at LEAST July or thereabouts.

Aside from the couple of guitar projects that are already "in flight" there's going to a "slow down" on building anything new for a while:)
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All the best to you, man. I'm sure you'll get into something even better. Enjoy your sabbatical!
 
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