Iceman Tele hybrid

[jlunderwood]

Hi all, first post here!

I thought I'd post a photo of my more or less finished wonky Iceman/Tele/etc. build. The body came from elsewhere (Nomoonlaser, who you can find online in a few places with a search), but the neck and many of the other components came from Warmoth. I absolutely love this thing, and I've been playing it as my #1 for a little while now. Without Warmoth I would have never been able to make the guitar I really wanted, with all my peculiar preferences. It's been a great learning experience. Now when I go to a guitar store I just think... nah, I wanna go home and play *my* axe.



Here are some stats:

Body:

• Reclaimed cedar from somebody's demolished deck. Sounds *and* smells great
• Front carved like a telecaster, though I had to make some modifications to fit the DiMarzio rails pickup in the neck position
• Some kind of nitro finish with a vintage yellow tint

Neck:

• Warmoth Tele replacement neck
• Reversed headstock (my first guitar was a Washburn N1, and I've had that preference ever since)
• Gibson scale conversion
• Quartersawn maple shaft & fretboard
• Modern medium nut width
• 59 Roundback profile
• 10" - 16" compound radius
• 22 frets
• SS6115 wide & tall stainless frets
• Vintage style tuners (had to ream the holes a bit to fit these kluson style ones, whoops)
• Block inlays
• Black side dots
• Tusq xl nut
• Vintage tint satin nitro finish

Hardware:

• Kluson style tuners
• Originally the Gotoh compensated three saddle bridge as pictured here, but I've since swapped it for a six saddle brass barrel style so it intonates a bit better
• Rockrabbit angled tele control plate - as you can see, I got the one with the control in the 'middle' and repurposed the tone hole for a front mounted jack
• Custom scratch plate - the first time I cut one myself! It even mostly looks ok!
• Witch hat jazzmaster style volume knob (no tone)
• Three position tele switch
• Copper tape cavity insulation throughout
• Oversized strap buttons (one placed on a neck screw - it balances just fine) and felt washers

Electronics:

• Bridge: Fralin split steel pole tele
• Neck: DiMarzio Chopper custom ordered in chrome to fit the tele-ish vibe
• Controls are just a normal tele without a tone control - dead simple
• 500k tone pot

I keep this tuned to drop C or D standard, and use some pretty basic 10-52 Stringjoy strings. It feels nice and slinky in hand. I wanted a super super simple instrument that had the aspects I liked from several different guitars - the slinkyness of a shorter scale, the simplicity of a tele, the knob, jack placement, and block inlay of my jazzmaster, and the reverse headstock of my old N1.

Now that It's done, there are only a few things that I'd change about it. While I chose the Fralin split steel pole for its hum cancelling and reported p90ish tone, I like the sound of their noiseless alnico pole p90 better. It's a bit more rude and sounds better with what I play. The Chopper is also just a bit too 'smooth' - I'd probably just go with two of the Fralin noiseless alnico pole p90s. Other than that, the only other thing I think would be to round out the fretboard edges, which I may still do. I'm afraid of ruining the finish on the fretboard, and it's something I've never done. Would gladly take any tips!

 

[jlunderwood]

Oh, also - my gf calls this guitar 'The Cheat', which has kinda stuck as a name for it (for those of you who remember Strongbad)