Shoestring Tele

[swarfrat]

You! Yes you! I'm still waiting (on my body).  Meanwhile - the boy has taken delivery of his jeep after some final touch up, wiring and fixing the steering (had to get a new retainer nut to keep the steering column located within the flats of the wheel) A very appreciative boy was positively squealing with delight. The motors were squealing as well.  Didn't take him long to discover that Jeeps are more about looking cool than actual off-roading  :evil4:

 

[rgand]

You! Yes you! I'm still waiting (on my body).  Meanwhile - the boy has taken delivery of his jeep after some final touch up, wiring and fixing the steering (had to get a new retainer nut to keep the steering column located within the flats of the wheel) A very appreciative boy was positively squealing with delight. The motors were squealing as well.  Didn't take him long to discover that Jeeps are more about looking cool than actual off-roading  :evil4:

:icon_thumright:

 

[swarfrat]

My body should be in the mail this week. The donor Rondo 23" scale strat came today. Cute little thing.

 

[swarfrat]

Started cutting out an 80% scaled down body last night from drawings when I realized.... Doh! Include the kid. He has HATED this last year of preschool because of all the crafts, scissors, and pencils. He's scary smart but a little slow on fine motor stuff. My wife is terrified that he'll flunk kindergarten and be headed to a life of crime. But our OT told us do NOT hold this child back. He just needs to work on stuff, but he'll be bored and you'll cause problems later on if you do.  Dad is convinced that most of his pencil/scissors/motor stuff is actually not wanting to cut out hearts and fish. But MAKING a GUITAR with Dad? He still talks about making his bass body 2 years ago with Dad and his Uncle. So I tossed all my cutouts in the trash and we're going to cut them out together tonight. We'll cut em out and glue em down on wood to make templates. I don't have a bandsaw but I do have a scroll saw and an oscillating spindle sander. He can help with the sanding part.

His will basically be a solid topped thinline. I think I have enough meat on the SX headstock to get something resembling a Tele out of it. I was thinking about narrowing the spacing a bit and making him a bridge to do so, but his guitar will be set up for slide and tuned to open something or other (but otherwise LOOK like dad's) so I'm not sure how much need there would be for all that.  I already have a set of lefty saddles left over from my left handed bridge, so if I get him a righty (coulda saved $10 on my saddles) bridge he'll have a reverse bridge pickup just like mine.


That should be both WAY COOL and also help out with the frustrations about playing it, since he won't have to fret about fretting.

 

[bagman67]

Your youngster is lucky to have a papa who's into including him in the fun stuff.  Go, dad!

 

[swarfrat]

Started drawing it myself, since I'm unsure of the neck pocket of the SX, I thought I'd be doing all the work anyway. <^H^H^H^ striking the plug for the plans I just paid for because they're 1) paper only, and 2) he's not processing orders in a timely fashion right now. Boo. ) Plus I haven't found the Tele bass control plate they used in drawings yet. My own drawings at work (between compiles) show that a tele plate with a switch is kinda big on an 80% scale body. Tele bass looks appropriate, but won't hold a blade switch, so - it's gonna be an esquire. (I tend to think single pickups are just fine on mini guitars. Look better proportioned and honestly - most of us could get by with one pickup much of the time, even if you occasionally wished for it.)

Got him a right handed wilky bridge and tele bass control plate on the way. I was thinking I'd just throw one of the strat pickups in, but it'd need some sort of control plate. If I have to buy something I'll probably put in a Neovin Hard Vintage.

Looking at tummy cuts (ie stylish ways to lighten the body), I noticed something I've never thought of in 30 years of playing. The traditional tummy cut is actually just an arc. I'm not sure what the best way to cut it is yet, but if you can imagine a (tiny) chainsaw on a pivot a foot away from the body or so, the arc it cuts would be perfect. Belt sander is too wide. One of those dremel chain saw wheels might cut it but it'd take several passes.

 

[rgand]

How cool to include your boy in the process. That will give him skills and direction that will stay with him all his life.

:icon_thumright: :icon_thumright: :icon_thumright:

 

[swarfrat]

My own sketch - I started taking another drawing floating around the net, scaled the body by 80%, cut and pasted the bridge/pickup locations and pickguard. Found a Tele bass drawing and made a control plate from that, then reshaped the pickguard to fit. It's actually a vector drawing. I'm just messing with the fill on the pickguard.  In addition to trying to follow the outline, I also reshaped the bass side - which appears to be untouched in many of these, to fit the scale a little better.

Looking at it in whole, looks like I probably should come in a bit further from the body edge on the pickguard treble side.

 

[swarfrat]

Ooops - forgot one of the most important aspects of why I'm making my own body:

 

[swarfrat]

Ok, I got his interest up but he didn't do any cutting. Hopefully it made/will make an impression once it hits the OSS and it becomes more than paper.
With the lefty (normally correct) bridge - but he's getting a righty bridge and mine will have a lefty so they match:

 

[swarfrat]

Bah! Lefty bites me again. The control plate...  a quick search of ebay and internet at large shows that Fender apparently made some, but I haven't yet found a source for lefty plates. So I'm hoping that the bottom of the plate is nice enough - I've occasionally seen rough bottoms on plated parts (like strat output jacks - however since this is a flat part, hopefully it's got an acceptable level of polish on the bottom.  The countersink will be on the wrong side but hopefully not too deep.

 

[swarfrat]

Ok, neck is off the Strat. Of course it's a Strat heel, but it's pretty close to 55+ mm straight x 69mm (center of heel), and no overhang, so - I gotta cut it to fit. This is something I've never done - I can make a positive part from a positive pattern, or a hole from a negative pattern. But I've never made a hole from a  positive part and every time I try I end up wondering if I'm having early onset Alzheimers.

Scale length ends up measuring 23.3", Bridge  to heel (uncompensated) is 6.25" and running D'Addario XL116 in open G through the compensator calculator says the middle of the compensation range is about 0.25" - so middle of the saddle range needs to be about 6.5" from the heel. And it looks like I need to redraw my pickguard and move the bridge about 1/3". Oh well it's just paper.

 

[Cagey]

To place your bridge accurately, first mount the neck you're going to use. Then, rather than measure from the heel to the bridge, measure from the fret side of the nut to the center of the 12th fret. That's half your scale length. That distance is what you should have from the center of the 12th fret to the mid-travel point of your bridge saddles. You may even want to set the bridge back an additional 1/8" or so as the high E, when intonated properly, will be the closest to the actual scale length. All the other strings will end up slightly longer.

 

[swarfrat]

I realized this morning that the pocket is essentially a shortened Strat neck pocket. Same width and shape, only a little bit shorter on the far end. I can flush trim any excess (that 1/2mm or so) So that takes care of the head scratching for making a pocket to fit. And I think it's probably better to set the front of the far saddle reach just ahead of scale than worry about aiming for the middle. It'll never be negative. I'm not sure though how much compensation is necessary on a slide only guitar though, as there's very little string tension.  (Speaking of slide... I've never seriously messed with it. Anyone have recommendations for little hands? Heavy lap steel bar? Does it need to be smaller, or just as long as the fingers go inside? ) I'm also kind of torn about making this basically a lap steel in telecaster form, or something he might actually try to fret (and get frustrated). I'm leaning towards "lap steel in disguise" as he doesn't "really" play and it would keep a hard masher from accidentally pressing the strings into the frets.  High and heavy.

 

[swarfrat]

Ahah! As I suspected - compensation isn't really helpful for lap steels:

Now to find my v-block

 

[swarfrat]

Redrawn with strat neck pocket and pickguard moved for the bridge:

The pocket is few mm short of the strat pocket but otherwise the same - at least on the body. In fact, as it turns out...
Behold the Rondomoth!

Say it's actually kinda cute. Forget 7/8 this is 6/8th! Too bad it won't intonate. I might have to explore this idea further at some point in the future.

 

[swarfrat]

Saddles $11, Bridge $13. So I have another bridge enroute! Dangit - I was trying to control the surplus parts. Now I'm gonna have another Tele bridge sitting around, and we all know what THAT leads to.

 

[swarfrat]

Found we have an 11x17 printer at work, got some 1/4" MDF and glued them down this afternoon. Control Plate and right handed bridge came in - flipped the saddles and voila - straight barrel saddles.  The control plate ... the bottom surface is not as nicely finished as the top. I was afraid of this, and it's going to be a hard thing to search for.  It'll do for now though.

 

[Cagey]

If you haven't had the pickguard made yet, you could switch to a standard Tele control plate, as they're asymmetrical.

 

[swarfrat]

I've got one for my guitar sitting on my desk. Next to the Tele it's HUGE. Really crowds the little guitar.  It's nearly 1/2 the body length. I might could put it top side up and flip it around 180 degrees. I'll have to stare at this a while, but it could work.