Telecaster Custom Rejuvination

[davegardner0]

I thought I'd start documenting one of my projects that's in-progress and half done as of now.

Here's a Squier Tele Custom that I bought when I was first learning to play, in 2003 I think. Of course the guitar has a lot of wear on it but the main problem is that it has a super skinny neck which is really not my taste any more. So I haven't played it for years but I'd like to start again!

My general plan is to replace the neck with something by Warmoth, and also upgrade the pickups and electronics. The body is solid wood (surprise!), and is made of Agathis wood which seems to be standard for Made in Indonesia™ guitars of the era. It supposedly sounds a lot like Mahogany but is very soft. So, the super thick black finish will stay on for structural reasons. And I'll need to do something about the pickguard screw holes which feel like they're half stripped out.

The first thing I did was measure a lot to see if my Squier's neck pocket is cut to the standard Fender spec or something different. I really wasn't sure because the neck is so skinny. Luckily though the pocket's width and height is correct. The depth is actually a bit TOO deep though, looks to be 11/16" instead of the standard 5/8". Luckily I found a guy online who sells a nice shim, along with some good info on neck pocket depths which explains why my neck pocket is cut too deep:
https://aperioguitar.com/what-you-dont-know-about-fender-necks-and-should/
https://aperioguitar.com/product/neck-shim-040/

The second thing I noticed about the Squier body and neck is that the neck holes aren't actually drilled in the right place inside the neck pocket. They're set back towards the bridge by maybe 1-2mm, and the whole neck plate is also rotated a bit (didn't get a shot of this before disassembling the guitar). I thought about ordering a Warmoth neck with no neck holes and drilling it to match the body, but something about purposely having things crooked bothers me. So the plan is to route out the body holes in the neck pocket to the correct location. The holes will be oversized but luckily the screws don't need to thread into the body anyway.

I ordered a neck!

And a month later it arrived!

It's much, much bigger than the Squier neck...perfect!!

This is also my first experience with roasted maple, stainless steel frets, and a compound radius on any guitar I've owned. So far WOW the roasted maple is really cool! The plan is to burnish the wood everywhere except the headstock face which I'm going to finish. I think the unfinished neck will match my beat up body pretty well (hopefully) and I love satin necks anyway.

 

[davegardner0]

First things first, let's see if I can get the neck to fit onto the body properly. The neck fits into the pocket well and the shim lets the fingerboard extension clear the pickguard, but the holes are very misaligned. So, out comes the dremel with router bit to move them to their appropriate locations.




Wow this wood is soft! That wasn't very hard. And luckily the neck shim makes a good template to see where the holes should be.


At this point the holes are a bit oversized. With the neck in the pocket I can actually look right through them and see the neck's pilot holes. So I think we're good to go!

In the other Warmoth build I did (the bass in my signature) I thought that the neck screws were way way too tight going into the neck, so this time I decided to modify my approach somewhat. Warmoth recommends lubricating the screws but I'd actually like the cut threads into the pilot holes instead, like when machining metal.
So I ordered some stainless steel neck screws from McMaster (#8 x 1 3/4" oval head) and ground off the sides of one with my dremel to turn it into a tap. I tried to keep the edges of the flat sides as sharp as possible.

I also ordered the correct pilot drill bit size for a #8 wood screw, a #29 bit. The Warmoth holes were smaller and also weren't drilled deep enough so I'm glad I got the right bit.

After drilling out the holes I tapped them using my new thread cutter as if it was metal (1/2 turn in, then backwards a little bit to break the chips). It went really well!! The screw went right in with no fear of stripping the heads or getting it stuck. And then the neck screws went snugly into the holes with full thread engagement but no getting stuck.

Looks pretty good!! The maple is darker than I expected but it looks nice with the black body.
The neck is still a little low in the pocket though, just like the original always was. I might email Aperio and see if they'll cut me a thicker shim. Or I could consider the angled shims from Stew-Mac.

 

[davegardner0]

I've had some "Genesis Sound" brand PAF clones sitting around here for a while, so I think I'll try them out in this guitar. They have Alnico 2 magnets I think, which hopefully will be a good combo with the maple neck and long Fender scale. Plus a while ago I installed 2 mini switches on the Tele's pickguard, which I can use as a series/parallel toggle for each pickup.



I used CTS 500K pots for the volumes, both with a treble bleed of (1 nF cap and 150kOhm resistor in series). I used alpha mini pots that I had on hand for the tone controls along with 0.47µF caps. For now the original switch is staying in, but if I end up playing this guitar a lot I'll probably put in a nice mechanical switch for the better switching feel.



I didn't take a photo of this but I also tried out a method I saw online to fix the body's stripped screw holes. I bought some new pickguard screws from McMaster (Stainless steel oval head #4 x 1/2", way cheaper than from guitar parts stores!). Then I dripped super glue into the holes, coated the screw threads with paste wax and drove the screws into the superglued holes before it had a chance to dry. The idea here is that the glue would wick into the wood and harden the threads cut into the wood, but won't stick to the screws because of the super glue. It seems to have worked really well on the holes with some threading left, but I think I'll need to add a filler and repeat on the totally stripped holes. I do think I'll use this technique on new builds in the future though as I think it'll reinforce the holes, sort of like a threaded insert in the wood.

 

[davegardner0]

Last post for today which will bring us up to my current progress...the headstock finishing! I know there are differing opinions on this but for me blank guitar headstocks don't look right. And since this guitar has a Squier body and a Fender licensed neck I decided on a Fender decal for the headstock.

Of course I have no intention of tricking anybody into think it's a real fender neck (it's nicer than one anyway). So when designing the decal I added in a few clues that would indicate the neck isn't a real Fender. For instance, I put my initials inside the ® instead of an r. Also on a Fender Telecaster Custom the "Fender" word is black with gold outline, but I flipped the colors like in a spaghetti logo. I also think this looks a bit more classy. Last but not least I also printed a Warmoth turtle logo which will go onto the back of the headstock. Of course the neck has WARMOTH burned into the heel as well...

Anyway, onto the photos. I designed the logo in inkscape and printed it onto waterslide decal paper. Then I did the "double flip" method to paint the gold inside the black outline from the back of the decal.


The plan is to french polish the headstock face, then apply the decal and spray over it with aerosol shellac to seal in the decal. Then I'll french polish and level sand to bury the decal in the finish.

Masking off everything except where I want finish to go:



First FP coat (along with a preview of my other project):


Maple is so dense that it only took me 3 sessions to get a glass-like finish, so now I'm ready for the decal!


And it's on! That was a little stressful...



After it's dry I'll spray it, then repeat the french polishing. Stay tuned for updates and thanks for reading!!

 

[dmraco]

Nice work.    Looking good

 

[rgand]

Nice progress. I'm looking forward to seeing it go together. I have an agathis Strat. The stuff makes a light body and sounds good.

 

[Verne Bunsen]

Very cool, I like the Tele Custom and I think the new neck will be a good compliment to yours.  :icon_thumright: 

 

[Blackouts]

Enjoying this thread !

Prior to signing onto UnWarmoth tonight had been looking at Tele Customs on Ebay, thinking about mods.....

Big fan of the Deluxes & Customs.

Like I need another guitar....

 

[BigSteve22]

Like I need another guitar....

I've found "need", to be a very subjective term. Especially when the subject is guitars!  :icon_jokercolor:

 

[davegardner0]

Enjoying this thread !

Prior to signing onto UnWarmoth tonight had been looking at Tele Customs on Ebay, thinking about mods.....

Big fan of the Deluxes & Customs.

Like I need another guitar....

Funny story, I've always loved the humbucker and other non-standard tele's much more than the original design. (Hence I bought this guitar when I was just learning to play). The one I really wanted though was always the Thinline with a natural finish and 2 wide-range humbuckers, but it was out of my price range at the time.

Well probably 5 years ago I finally bought myself one of the reissues and hated it! The nut was skinny, the pickups were muddy, and worst of all the bridge was misplaced so the high e would fall off of the fingerboard.

Oh well! I guess you shouldn't meet your heroes, right? It did look cool though  :glasses9:

 

[davegardner0]

I spent a week building up coats of shellac over the decal but then ran into a problem.

Midway through spraying:


The shellac looked nice and thick and ready to be sanded back:


Using 600 wet paper I sanded until everything was level and I couldn't see the decal backing lines anymore. And right at that moment a mini disaster struck - a portion of the shellac over the decal peeled away.  ??? :icon_scratch: :sad1:


So now that I had a nice crater I had to respray the end of the headstock and re-sand. During sanding the 2nd time I tried to be really gentle but it happened again! This time over the "tom" of the custom text. No!!!!!! Well this time I really thought about what happened and what the cause could be. I'm currently just finishing respraying the 3rd time but here's my analysis and the plan to safely sand back the 3rd time. I used a soft foam sanding block and I think I forgot to put some soap in the water during sanding. I remember the sanding block sort of suctioning to the surface, and I think this generated the force which pulled the shellac off of the decal. The shellac probably doesn't stick to the decal like it does to the wood because the decal is less porous.

For this time, the plan is to use a wood sanding block which is perfectly flat (and the headsotck face isn't perfectly flat so hopefully it won't create a seal). Also I'll use water with some soap as a lubricant. Wish me luck! And any other thoughts/ideas are definitely welcome!

 

[BigSteve22]

Sorry to hear your having such a problem sanding. I use lacquer on my necks, so I'm not 100% sure this would work in your case. I use a small wooden block, appx. 1"x1-1/2", with self adhesive cork shelf liner on one side. The block keeps things flat, while the cork provides a little "give" to the surface to avoid gouging. I also just use plain water as a lube,  avoids contaminating the surface before the finish coats are applied.

 

[Verne Bunsen]

And right at that moment a mini disaster struck - a portion of the shellac over the decal peeled away.  ??? :icon_scratch: :sad1:

Man, I have encountered that exact same thing. "Just a couple more passes with the sand paper... and... NOOOOOOOO!" I ended up with a satisfactory recovery but it sure had me sweating. Here's hoping yours comes out to your liking!

 

[Cagey]

Shouldn't really need any lubricant other than water, and that's more to keep the paper from loading up than anything else.

When you're sanding between coats, you don't need to be too aggressive. You basically just wanna take the high spots off and keep building until you've got 6 or 8 coats on there, then you've got something with a little more structural integrity and you can level and finish sand, then buff and polish.

 

[davegardner0]

Quick question for you guys.
Normally with french polishing I only use a little polishing compound if anything after the final FP session to achieve a gloss (i.e. no sanding with progressively finer papers to build a gloss). But this headstock seems a bit small for doing a "glaze coat" and getting a good gloss after I sand it level, so I think I'm going to need to sand it/polish it out to a gloss.

I don't have much experience doing so but the process does seem straightforward in general. One thing I'm not sure about though...when sanding with something like 800 grit paper, how do you know when you've erased all of the scratches from the previous grit paper? If I was sanding wood I'd use a pencil to ensure all surfaces were touched and sanded deep enough but I can't do that here of course. I don't want to get to my final paper and still have some bigger scratches left because I didn't stay on a grit long enough.

Anything else I should watch out for?

 

[Cagey]

Wet it down with something like naphtha and hold it at an angle in a good light, preferably sunlight, and most imperfections should show up.

 

[davegardner0]

Made more progress on this project!

First order was to very carefully sand out the non-level area where I resprayed to cover the hole in the shellac. I ended up sticking with my foam sanding block and used water with soap. I didn't use much pressure which made the sanding take a while but luckily I didn't cause any more shellac peeling off.


Getting Closer


I tried straight-up polishing out the headstock face, and was left with some "polishing lines" like I didn't "erase" the 600-800 grit with the finer grit papers (hence the questions I was asking above). Also I forgot to seal the inside of the tuner holes with shellac on a little brush, so I got some cracking around them during the wet sanding (oops). The cracks were really bad right after sanding since the water had soaked into the end grain, but got a lot smaller when I let the headstock sit for a day. Either way though I wasn't totally happy with this finish overall.

So next, after letting the tuner holes dry out for a day I sealed them with shellac on a little brush. Then I did a single, very light french polishing session while being super careful not to have the pad drag on the tiny headstock and leave fibers in the finish. It worked pretty well to smooth out the remaining weirdness and also heal the cracking some. I didn't worry about pressing super hard and getting a gloss with the french polishing itself, but just tried to build a little thickness and smooth things out. I think this really helped not getting any dragging of the pad.

Then I started with 9um grit polishing paper and polished out to 1um. (I love this flexible paper from Stew-Mac http://www.stewmac.com/Materials_and_Supplies/Sanding_and_Polishing/Sandpaper_and_Finishing_Papers/3M_Flexible_Polishing_Papers.html) Last I buffed with some Novus #2 compound and a rag, and.........success!!!



You can see a little bit of one of the cracks left in the middle of the light here.


Kind of funny, with all of the spraying I built up a bit of finish thickness. And it impressively built up on the masking tape I had on the side of the headstock. So I sanded this off.


I had rolled the neck edges earlier, so I used little strips of the same polishing paper to smooth out the file marks and get everything looking nice.


Then I burnished the whole neck except for the fretboard and headstock face. I used the technique that has been discussed here a lot before, and, wow!!!!!!!!! That sure is one nice smooth playing surface! Feels like nothing else I've ever played on. I started at 600 grit and worked progressively to 2000, and the whole process only took me maybe 20 minutes.


I will say though, when I wiped the neck down with naphtha at the end to clean off the sawdust it made me a little sad that I'm leaving this neck unfinished. The Roasted maple sure is pretty with a "finish" on it!

 

[dmraco]

Very nice.  I can never get the ends of my water slides to completely disappear.  What’s the secret?

 

[davegardner0]

Very nice.  I can never get the ends of my water slides to completely disappear.  What’s the secret?

Not sure if I have a secret, but basically I think they disappear because I french polish some after spraying which really "blurs" the decal lines and smooths everything out. Also I sand with a pretty flexible foam block which rides up onto the decal and thus I think sands "ramps" over the lines. So the headstock face is locally flat but not globally flat.

That all being said, shellac shrinks and settles into the wood so in 6 months or a year the decal lines will be visible again, as well as some of the pores into the maple. I'm fine with that though, it's part of the charm of a french polished finish and everything still stays shiny.

 

[davegardner0]

I drilled the screw holes for the tuners before finishing the headstock but it looks like I forgot to post it, so I'll show you guys those pics now...

I always struggle badly with getting the screws for tuners in without getting the screws stuck or stripped out. Yes I do drill pilot holes but things still always seem too tight. So given this plus the big scary warning Warmoth's roasted maple necks come with, I thought I'd up my game a bit.

First I lined up the tuners, then used my inlay scribe to mark where the holes should be.



Tuners typically use #2 x 3/8" wood screws, so I bought from McMaster the exact recommended drill bit, a #48 bit. This bit is exactly the same diameter as the screw's shaft, which is good because screws really don't fit well into maple if the shaft needs to compress any wood. I think this was a big part of my problem on previous builds, I didn't have the exact right drill bit and I was drilling my holes a bit small.

Anyway, I marked my drill bit for the correct drilling depth:


I have a little hand drill from harbor freight that I've been using to drill small holes like these, as I feel like it gives me good control in making the hole perpendicular to the surface, plus it goes slow so depth control is easy. I may sub in my drill press next time though.
For now though, each hole takes me about 30 seconds:


Next I wanted to cut threads into these holes instead of just forcing the screws in with wax. So I made the mini version of the neck screw thread cutter I showed before.
It just needs to go into each hole once, and it easily goes right in.


All ready for tuners:


I could have used the phillips screws I linked to above to install the tuners, but I can't use the hipshot provided screws now as my holes are tapped wrong. (The hipshot screws aren't exactly a #2, they are slightly bigger, maybe metric) I went for a third option though and bought these cool #2 x 3/8" flat-head screws. For whatever reason I think nice slotted screws look better on a guitar in a spot like this, especially next to the steampunk-ish open gear tuners, plus the stainless finish matches the nickel tuners well.



Fast forward to now, after finishing, and I put the tuners on for real. I swapped the hipshot keystone buttons with some oval knobs which I think look cool. My only complaint on the tele headstock is that the tuner bushings are a little big, but that's okay.