My latest build/assembly

[stephen]

Although I know that trem-less Telecasters aren't exactly the No1 guitar of interest on this forum, I thought you wouldn't mind if I shared some details & (hopefully, if they upload!) photos of my latest project. I've already got 5 Stratocasters in various colours and have no real inclination or need to add to that, hence this Tele.

I've put guitars together before, but they've usually been unfinished, so they're a lot less scary to work on than this high-gloss poly one. The body and neck were sourced differently and consequently, were not an exact match initially. Approaching the neck pocket with chisels & files in order to make the neck an exact fit had me sweating, especially when a little chunk of finish from around those sharp, pocket edges pinged off! Fortunately, a trip to the Rimmel nail varnish stand in Superdrug, resulted in a near exact match for the cherry colour. Massive sigh of relief! After a lot of careful fettling, the neck fits beautifully & snugly and when I eventually set the guitar up, I was able to achieve the correct action & saddle height without shimming the neck pocket. First time ever on even my shop bought Fenders!

Next set-back was finding that the premium, USA spec. pre-wired control plate just wouldn't fit. The width of the body's control plate aperture was a miserly 25mm and the actual width of the CTS pots were 23mm without taking into account the connections. Similarly, the depth of the wired Oak Grigsby vintage 3-way switch was over 35mm, but the cavity depth was only 30mm. With a total body depth of just 42mm, I just didn't fancy trying to rout it away with my hand-held Dremel in case I went straight through the back! Fortunately, I had a pre-wired 'import' spec control plate intended for a less prestige project, which fitted and allowed the all-important bit of sideways movement (essential in the later lining up of plate parallel to bridge & notch in pickguard). I was able to remove the beefy Switchcraft jack socket from the USA plate and re-solder onto the import one. Shame about not being able to use the Oak Grigsby & CTS pots, but needs must.....

Making sure that all the components 'mate' with each other is a lot trickier on a Tele than a Strat. The pickguard has to fit snugly around the neck, whilst centring its neck pickup cavity with the neck pickup itself (which has to be screwed into the body cavity & takes a few attempts to align), and also has to have an equal spacing around the top of the bridge plate and finally fitting snugly around the upper edge of the control plate. Whilst the bridge plate's position is virtually fixed, its right-hand edge has to run parallel with the left-hand edge of the control plate. Hence the almost inevitable requirement for space to be able to 'swivel' the plate (with it's wiring underneath) and achieve this. A lot of things to juggle with, especially without damaging the finish.

Anyway, it's all done now and I hope you agree that it looks rather good. It certainly sounds good . Those ToneRider Vintage Plus pickups not only look like they're made like vintage ones, they sound good as well. Centre colour of the guitar has come out rather brash & yellow in the photo. In actuality it's a lot more subtle orangey shade.
Here's a breakdown of the build/costs :

Pre-lacquered 3-piece alder body with flame maple veneered cherry sunburst finish £95 from Amazon.
One-piece flame maple neck with 14" radius £87 from eBay.
ToneRider Vintage Plus pickup set in gold £54 (special offer) AGC Custom Guitars.
Wilkinson bridge with compensated saddles in gold £24 AGC Custom Guitars
Wilkinson De-Luxe Kluson-style tuners in gold £23 Axesrus.
Pre-wired USA spec control plate in gold £34 AGC Custom Guitars (see above)
Hardware bits & pieces/screws/buttons etc £15 AGC Custom Guitars & Axesrus.
Tortoise Shell effect 8-hole spec 1 pickguard £6 Axesrus bargain basement!
Optima 10-46 24k gold strings £12 Astrings.
All my hard work & skills (!!)....priceless!
Total cost : £350.

And now for the next Tele. A beautiful one-piece, lightweight, swamp ash body from the USA and this time, in an unfinished state!

Stephen.

[Billyboygretsch]

Nice work. It's nice to be able to build something you really want at a fraction of the cost of a named model. Well done and thanks for sharing.

[stephen]

Glad you liked it Bill and thanks for your kind comments. These days, I just don't get that much of a buzz out of going out and buying a new guitar. The anticipation & subsequent excitement of purchase are over and gone too quickly (at least for me).
Assembling a guitar from components adds to my enjoyment of this hobby of ours. Encountering and overcoming some difficulties along the way, just adds to that sense of achievement when it's finished, set-up & playing well......hopefully!

Stephen.

[ecca]

Looks great.

[stephen]

Thanks Ecca!

[dave robinson]

Looks a cracker that Stephen, I solved the problem of my '62 Custom Tele being 'tremless' by fitting a Stetsbar - no drilling it goes straight on in place of the ashtray using the same holes. The sound remains the same apart from the fact you can dip or raise the string pitch.
When I want to sell, I can restore it to it's original state. Until then the trem works great.

[stephen]

Thanks Dave. It was one of your posts that put me onto AGC. They're a great bunch of people that actually seem to care about what they're selling and practice that oft forgotten adage, "customer service". AGC and Axesrus are solid, reliable people to deal with. Do you think that there is any significance in that they are both Yorkshire based? Whatever. They both get the 'thumbs-up' from me!

Stephen.

[dave robinson]

I deal with Axesrus quite a bit. Craig is sorting out some wiring for my SG that I want coil-tapped.
AGC are close to me and I pop in and see them now and again, I've had a couple of lovely Strat bodies and necks from them recently. They are lovely people at both outlets, with good friendly old fashioned service, something that is lacking in many areas today.

[ecca]

I agree entirely about buying/building guitars.
It's much better to do your own, to your own spec as witnessed in my latest epic video on the sound file section using the guitar I made ........

[RayL]

Stephen, (and everyone else who uploads enormous pictures)

Please, please, downsize your pictures to no more than 500 pixels in their larger side before you upload them. That way they can be seen as a whole rather than only seeing 'bits' by using the scroll bars. Photoshop or any similar program will do that very easily.

A second good reason is that it helps our Administrator, Bob Dore, because big pictures take up a lot of bandwidth and that almost certainly costs him money.

Ray