Anniversary Telecaster

Thanks guys, she did a pretty good job :icon_thumright:

Hopefully I can get this thing finished up over my winter break. I'm unsure of what kind of pickups to put in it.
 
I'd go with Bareknuckles, (any of the Tele sets) they're excellent pickups, and this build deserves something special in the pickup department!  :headbang:
 
Bagman67 said:

I am actually pretty much 90% sold on Roadhouse pickups. I am just wanting people to chime in with sets I haven't heard of because I have never really looked into tele pickups at all.
 
Well, I have a Duncan Quarter Pound bridge pickup with a coil tap, and I like it pretty well also - it's pretty frickin' loud at full strength, and when you tap it, it's a pretty solid conventional Tele-sounding p'up.


If you want to go noiseless, the DiMarzio Area set sounds pretty good - not as "blunted" as many humbucking single-coil replacements.
 
Phewwww well it has been a while. I'm gonna rebuild this thread seeing as how apparently all the links are broken.

So for a bunch of random reasons this guitar has been patiently waiting for me to work on it for a long while now. I finally decided that it was the right time to start back up and am on the home stretch to finishing it off. Finally. So first, some recap.


When I first got the body, this was almost 3 years ago...strange to think about.


I sent it off to Tonar, and the first step was sealing it up.


First bit of color.


Skipping forward to getting it back, and getting the neck. I apparently don't have any good pictures of the neck when I got it, so this will have to work.








Then I finally got around to putting ferrules in the back.


And the tuner bushings up top.


And drilled a few holes in the back of the headstock for these guys.


Something that is completely surprising to me is how much the tru-oil tinted the neck. I'm not sure if I remember it being so tinted after I first applied it, but I just read that it ambers up with time too. The lighting makes the neck look really amber, it is a few shades more mellow than this, but it certainly isn't like a "water" clear.


I also put the bridge/bridge pickup on for giggles.

I need to get some nut cutting tools, which is going to be pretty soon.
 
Sorry the most recent pictures are kind of yellow, all I have in my house are those "soft glow" fluorescents. They make everything very yellow.
 
Yellow cast or not, she's a beauty.  Glad you're making forward progress with it.


Bagman
 
Were taking a break right now, extremely long distances and all. However, we still have very strong feelings for each other, just seeing where life takes us at the moment.

Anyone have any thoughts comments on mounting a tele neck pickup directly? Like without a ring? I want to try that first.
 
I got my nut making kit from Stewmac on the way, and I finished this guy up minus the wiring. I promise the next set of pictures will be quality, sunlight pictures.

I decided to direct mount the neck pickup. It isn't perfect in the rout, but I plugged the holes and tried again and got slightly better but similar results, so I figured that was my bodies way of saying "Hey, I'm not a computer controlled machine, some comparing me to one" and got over it.





Not sure how wild I am about the chrome knobs, but they are easy enough to change out if I decide I want to.
 
rapfohl09 said:
Were taking a break right now, extremely long distances and all. However, we still have very strong feelings for each other, just seeing where life takes us at the moment.

I'm late to this particular party I admit - but I have to say "what the hell?? go after that girl!  She bought you a GUITAR!"
 
She didn't just buy him a guitar... As he stated in his first post, "Everything about this telecaster is perfect, and exactly what I had always envisioned for a telecaster project".

Three years later:  No finished dream tele and no girlfriend.  I'm drawing parallel conclusions rapfohl!  I'm not Dear Abby, but let me suggest that you complete that tele and play that girl a song... I'm just sayin...
 
telecutie said:
She didn't just buy him a guitar... As he stated in his first post, "Everything about this telecaster is perfect, and exactly what I had always envisioned for a telecaster project".

Three years later:  No finished dream tele and no girlfriend.  I'm drawing parallel conclusions rapfohl!  I'm not Dear Abby, but let me suggest that you complete that tele and play that girl a song... I'm just sayin...

I think that would be very fitting  :headbang1:
 
I'm feeling you guys, believe me. I am hoping to not make her the elusive "one that got away".

Quick update, I have cut a few nuts for a couple of my guitars as practice, and the one for this guitar is waiting to have the slots taken down to their final depths. I got annoyed with it because as you can imagine with the vintage style tuners, you string it up, see the nut needs to come down a little, tune it down to move the string, and bam, the string comes completely undone. The top two strings are the worst, as you would expect.

I want to get this is in this months GOTM so, it should be done either later tonight or tomorrow.
 
Damn! How far do you detune to move a string out of a nut slot? You don't pull your pants down to take a piss, do you? And why bother to detune at all? Don't even tune it!

You're working too hard. All you need to do to set nut slot height is have the string to be somewhat tense so there's no angularity to it. You're measuring string height above the frets, not whether it'll tune right. You can pull the string out of the slot by hand and move it to one side easily enough. Once you've got the height right, then you can tune it up and try to play "Happy New Guitar Day". At that point, if you've got a good ear, you'll probably notice you need to set intonation.
 
Cagey, as always you are (hilariously) correct. I got my procedure down, so things are working much better.

Slot heights are set, just gotta do the final shaping.
 
Well, we got a ton of snow the day I finished it, so no outside pictures. I was fed up with waiting, so I just tried to get some good ones inside.

Here we are ladies and gents, a few years in the making, but finished all the same.



















It needs a set up, but actually getting to play it puts the biggest grin on my face. Everything in my apartment is the same color, so there are some color-balancing issues, but whatever.

I could say more, but the pictures speak louder, what do you guys think?
 
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