Nashville Tele Parts arrived!

[tfarny]

My first Warmoth finally arrived!  As you can see, it's killer. The neck photo isn't very good, but trust me it's really nice.  Just finely, precisely worked wood.  A pleasure to look at. Here's the specs:
one-piece swamp ash tele body with all three contours, routed H - S - T.  Custom order. Seems pretty light, although I didn't pay extra for that.
Tele neck: Brazilian on maple, Clapton contour, 6150 frets, 1 11/16 nut, vintage modern.  From the Showcase.

I'll use an Earvana nut, GFS alnico premium vintage strat pups in the neck and middle (I got the HB route in case I wanted to change it up in future). Gotoh tele bridge (it's a nice substantial piece) with a SD little '59 tele bridge pup. And, finally, I'm trying out the Graphtech Ghost piezo saddles with preamp.  The idea is to get a guitar which looks like a great old-school rig at first glance but has lots of tonal flexibility and is comfortable as hell.

 

[tfarny]

the back

 

[tfarny]

the neck

 

[tfarny]

semi-put together

 

[tfarny]

A few comments before I start finishing this lady:
1.  Wow the neck is nice. Great frets, great piece of Brazilian RW. The Warmoth radius isn't nearly as radical as I feared, but the proof is in the playing so we'll see in a few weeks.

2.  Wow the body is nice. What a great hunk of tree.

3.  The Clapton contour isn't as pronounced as I expected: I played some G&L teles in the local shop which had a more pronounced contour and thicker neck.  The Warmoth version isn't that far off of a 'normal' shape, a very 'soft V' I guess you'd say.  I think it'll be no problem to get used to, in fact I was a little concerned whether I would enjoy the big neck I thought I was getting.

4.  Very minor issue: the wiring passage from the middle pup to the cavity doesn't seem to go all the way through, I'll go at it with a coat hanger in case there's just some wood splinters blocking it, but I don't want to have to take a drill to the inside of this body, it just scares me a little.

5.  The neck SC pickup doesn't quite fit in the HB hole I had drilled there; I thought any size pickup would fit in a HB hole, but I was wrong.  It looks like the SC position is just a little forward of where the HB is normally centered.  In other words, I'm going to have to route out the area a little bit.  This will be okay in the end, but it's not something I wanted to do.  I explained my plan clearly to the Warmoth sales guy (route a HB and then mount a SC pickup in it, and I ordered the S-S PG from Warmoth) and he didn't let me know this would be an issue.  I guess it's maybe too much to ask for the sales guys to know all the dimensions and fit of everything, but it would have helped if he'd known this would be an issue.

 

[bpmorton777]

thats real nice dude! I like the use of the bigger hum rout in the neck...you can choose later on if you want to modify your pickup selection.

Brian

 

[Nando Vallart]

Hummm perhaps he didn't remember it at the time, you should send an email to him and told it... For a next time he'll know, at least... maybe they can make something to fix it... Because I have seen routes for humbucker-or-single, it's just like a humbucker with the "top" line larger, like a SC...

I'm not a great fan of Nashville Tele, but this one looks like will be great! What's going to be the finish?

 

[nathan a]

Whats the wiring plan? 5 way strat switch? Something devious?

 

[tfarny]

The finish is going to be a light amber stain then tung oil.  Keeping it simple the first time.

The wiring plan, is a standard 5-way switch with master volume and tone on a concentric pot, and graphtech ghost piezo saddles with the internal preamp and dedicated volume control.  The output jack lets you blend the two pup types (mag and piezo) if you use a standard cable, or output them separately if you use a y-cable.  So you can put the piezo signal directly into a PA or something while your mag signal goes to the regular amp.  It's going to take a little drilling through, and routing under, the bridge plate. Looks like it's going to be a squeeze getting all that inside a tele control route. I'll start a DIY finish post and when that's finished, I'll post about the piezo installation.

 

[guitlouie]

Nice looking Tele, there T!  Sorry to hear about the troubles with the SC not fitting the Hum route.  The strat I just finished was from the showcase and had a H-S-S route, but I did S-S-S for now, but on a strat that bridge pickup is a little askew, so mine fit right in there, I could see how if I was trying to put it straight in that spot it might not fit.  Bummer!