I haven't posted in awhile, but I thought I'd share the partscaster I just completed. this is the first one that I used a prefinished body on, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
I finished putting this together and setting it up late last night. I played it for about an hour this morning, fine-tuning the pickup heights and I'm super happy with how it sounds. I got the neck from Warmoth, based on my previous good experiences with them and the body is a Baja tele body that I deglossed a little - extra fine steel wool followed by 1200 grit micro mesh and then polished it with a carnuba wax compound. The body is also the lightest tele body I have, which is a good thing, given the super heavyweight Bigsby B16. It's still got a satin gloss but doesn't have that ultra dazzling plastic shine anymore.
Neck: 1-11/16" nut, 9.5" radius, satin nitro finish
Body: Fender Baja tele ash with blonde poly finish
Neck pickup: Lollar Alnico 3
Bridge pickup: Buddha Pickups Alnico 2
Bridge: compensated aluminum rocking bar with Bigsby B16
Tuners: Gotoh vintage
I wired up the harness myself and used a no-load tone pot. I have to say I'm super happy with the combination of pickups. The bridge pickup is almost identically to what I have in my previous tele build, since I really like the way it sounds. It's got a good amount of grit to it while still retaining some tele twang. The neck Lollar pickup is really sweet sounding, nice and chimey. I'm very pleased with the combination of these 2 pickups.
Once I locked down the bridge position with regard to intonation and string alignment, I lightly traced parts of the bridge base with a 0.5mm pencil, took off the bridge and secured the base to the body with a couple of small pieces of thin 3M double stick tape underneath. The string tension is pretty good, but I play in a pretty fast and loud punk rock band and if I tried hard enough I was able to cause the bridge to shift. I don't want to take any chances of this happening during a show.
I finished putting this together and setting it up late last night. I played it for about an hour this morning, fine-tuning the pickup heights and I'm super happy with how it sounds. I got the neck from Warmoth, based on my previous good experiences with them and the body is a Baja tele body that I deglossed a little - extra fine steel wool followed by 1200 grit micro mesh and then polished it with a carnuba wax compound. The body is also the lightest tele body I have, which is a good thing, given the super heavyweight Bigsby B16. It's still got a satin gloss but doesn't have that ultra dazzling plastic shine anymore.
Neck: 1-11/16" nut, 9.5" radius, satin nitro finish
Body: Fender Baja tele ash with blonde poly finish
Neck pickup: Lollar Alnico 3
Bridge pickup: Buddha Pickups Alnico 2
Bridge: compensated aluminum rocking bar with Bigsby B16
Tuners: Gotoh vintage
I wired up the harness myself and used a no-load tone pot. I have to say I'm super happy with the combination of pickups. The bridge pickup is almost identically to what I have in my previous tele build, since I really like the way it sounds. It's got a good amount of grit to it while still retaining some tele twang. The neck Lollar pickup is really sweet sounding, nice and chimey. I'm very pleased with the combination of these 2 pickups.
Once I locked down the bridge position with regard to intonation and string alignment, I lightly traced parts of the bridge base with a 0.5mm pencil, took off the bridge and secured the base to the body with a couple of small pieces of thin 3M double stick tape underneath. The string tension is pretty good, but I play in a pretty fast and loud punk rock band and if I tried hard enough I was able to cause the bridge to shift. I don't want to take any chances of this happening during a show.
