jimijames
New member
So I went back and looked up my last post before I put together this guitar and came back here - it's been 3 years and I'm pretty sure I had all the parts then haha. I was waiting to decide on and implement a design for the guitar, like I did with my first project guitar, but nothing ever came to fruition, so I just built the thing.
Here's the telecaster:
Ash body (2-piece when warmoth had a sale), Maple neck with kingwood fretboard. Reranch Nitro in "sonic blue," with grain filler over that. I originally wanted to let the lacquer sink into the grain and use a filler over that (like gibson's voodoo guitars) but what happened is when I sanded the lacquer originally I used 300 grit sandpaper, which was so fine the dust got caught in the grain and so the grain filler never took - it just looks like a whitewashed fence now. I'm going to take her apart again to tighten the truss rod, finish the neck in tru oil (when I bought it it was finished with shellac IIRC), and maybe put a design on the body if I can think of one.
Electronics are jerry donahue bridge (measured at ~7.8k) and a custom wound neck pickup (6.8k, unpotted, scatter wound, degaussed alnico 2, ~.7k imbalance between the coils, screw coil stronger). 500k pots all around. Weirdly, I wired up a push/pull to split the neck and even split it's only a little quieter than the JD bridge. The neck pickup isn't dark at all - very detailed and 'round' sounding - almost like a strat neck pickup but with less of that stratty 'pop.' I dunno, it's hard to describe.
I put a .015 cap for the neck tone and a .22 for the bridge. Neck rolled down all the way sounds like a half-cocked wah pedal. Bridge tone takes off a greater range of frequencies so rolled down it sounds very dull, like a blanket is over everything. Could be good for Jazz if I was played well enough, but I don't so I just leave both tones all the way up all the time.
It doesn't have that traditional tele twang - I blame that big aluminum bigsby. Just as well as I wasn't looking for something that's a traditional tele. The bridge pickup does still twang some but it's a far call from what you hear on Merle Haggard records.
As I use .11's the bigsby bridge has about a semi-tone in range so I need to either get a used engine valve spring and grind it down, find a stiffer bigsby spring (I think they sell 1" whereas the one that came with it was 1/2") or put some washers under there, which won't actually increase the range as much as lift the arm up away from the body. I may also do nothing as I have an '86 Kramer (poplar body I think, made in japan with a floyd rose and a 59/custom w/ degaussed A5 in the bridge) that I can use for all the whammy bar acrobatics I desire.
Really, really happy with it (the tele that is). Has a great open tone in the neck position with tons of sustain, very full. Bridge has some tele twang but is versatile enough to cop an early Led Zepplin half dirty half clean tone. Actually, I was playing some clean stuff on it through my amp (gutted and re-wired marshall that's now a plexi clone) and it surprised me how close it was to the clean tone from stairway. Wasn't expecting that when I put it together.
I'd just like to say, if I'm not back for a while, that this forum is the reason I decided to put together a parts guitar. Without the help from the folks here I'd still be playing vuvuzela. Thank you guys.
Here's the telecaster:
Ash body (2-piece when warmoth had a sale), Maple neck with kingwood fretboard. Reranch Nitro in "sonic blue," with grain filler over that. I originally wanted to let the lacquer sink into the grain and use a filler over that (like gibson's voodoo guitars) but what happened is when I sanded the lacquer originally I used 300 grit sandpaper, which was so fine the dust got caught in the grain and so the grain filler never took - it just looks like a whitewashed fence now. I'm going to take her apart again to tighten the truss rod, finish the neck in tru oil (when I bought it it was finished with shellac IIRC), and maybe put a design on the body if I can think of one.
Electronics are jerry donahue bridge (measured at ~7.8k) and a custom wound neck pickup (6.8k, unpotted, scatter wound, degaussed alnico 2, ~.7k imbalance between the coils, screw coil stronger). 500k pots all around. Weirdly, I wired up a push/pull to split the neck and even split it's only a little quieter than the JD bridge. The neck pickup isn't dark at all - very detailed and 'round' sounding - almost like a strat neck pickup but with less of that stratty 'pop.' I dunno, it's hard to describe.
I put a .015 cap for the neck tone and a .22 for the bridge. Neck rolled down all the way sounds like a half-cocked wah pedal. Bridge tone takes off a greater range of frequencies so rolled down it sounds very dull, like a blanket is over everything. Could be good for Jazz if I was played well enough, but I don't so I just leave both tones all the way up all the time.
It doesn't have that traditional tele twang - I blame that big aluminum bigsby. Just as well as I wasn't looking for something that's a traditional tele. The bridge pickup does still twang some but it's a far call from what you hear on Merle Haggard records.
As I use .11's the bigsby bridge has about a semi-tone in range so I need to either get a used engine valve spring and grind it down, find a stiffer bigsby spring (I think they sell 1" whereas the one that came with it was 1/2") or put some washers under there, which won't actually increase the range as much as lift the arm up away from the body. I may also do nothing as I have an '86 Kramer (poplar body I think, made in japan with a floyd rose and a 59/custom w/ degaussed A5 in the bridge) that I can use for all the whammy bar acrobatics I desire.
Really, really happy with it (the tele that is). Has a great open tone in the neck position with tons of sustain, very full. Bridge has some tele twang but is versatile enough to cop an early Led Zepplin half dirty half clean tone. Actually, I was playing some clean stuff on it through my amp (gutted and re-wired marshall that's now a plexi clone) and it surprised me how close it was to the clean tone from stairway. Wasn't expecting that when I put it together.
I'd just like to say, if I'm not back for a while, that this forum is the reason I decided to put together a parts guitar. Without the help from the folks here I'd still be playing vuvuzela. Thank you guys.
