While waiting for my other order, let’s build a Tele!

[Hodgo]

I’m guessing based on other posters, my Velocity project will not be landing any time soon. So what’s a fella to do?

Well, I decided to order a custom Tele body with no finish applied in the hopes it comes sooner and gives me a different project to pass the time. It’s pretty much a standard Tele with a roasted swamp ash body, with the addition of an upper LP toggle switch in addition to the hot dog top rout.

The neck is coming from a different company because frankly they offered what I wanted - roasted maple 21 fret 24.75” scale conversion neck, with a Les Paul neck profile, Jescar 51100 frets, and a 9.5-12” compound radius. That will be fit with a nylon 6/6 nut and Gotoh 510 H.A.P.M. tuners with ivoroid buttons.

The guitar will have Wilde Alnico T Micro-coils and the LP toggle switch will handle pickup selection duties. The theme of this build is basically a great looking Tele that feels ergonomically like a great Les Paul in the hands.

Bridge is up in the air - I’m really leaning towards a Bigsby B16. It just has that old school vibe, and with the added neck angle will change some of the geometry to be more Gibson like as well.

 

[SHall08]

Hello, fellow Tele builder! Do you have pictures of the guitar you’re building?

 

[Hodgo]

Hello, fellow Tele builder! Do you have pictures of the guitar you’re building?

Give Warmoth a few weeks to build it

 

[SHall08]

My bad Hodgo! I didn’t catch that it hadn’t come in yet. I do that often, so you may have to overlook me.

 

[Hodgo]

And what do we do while waiting for Warmoth to build the body? We build out part of the wiring harness!

This is a four pole 3 way switch. As I said before - the Tele will have an LP toggle switch, so this 4 pole switch is going to provide parallel/series/half out of phase sounds while the toggle does pickup selection. Keen eyes may notice this is a “reverse” control scheme for the tele, where the volume pot will be closest to the neck and the 3-way will be towards the tail.

 

[stratamania]

Keen eyes may notice this is a “reverse” control scheme for the tele, where the volume pot will be closest to the neck and the 3-way will be towards the tail.

Have you got enough length in the wires to the output jack as it will need to travel further to the final output jack position, plus a bit extra for play when fitting and/or for removing for maintenance?

 

[aarontunes]

What's the cap alongside the blade switch for?

 

[Hodgo]

Have you got enough length in the wires to the output jack as it will need to travel further to the final output jack position, plus a bit extra for play when fitting and/or for removing for maintenance?

Yessir, there is about 1.25” of excess, I can twist the leads tighter or looser as needed.

What's the cap alongside the blade switch for?

In position 2, the pickups will be parallel, out of phase, and that cap (.01uf) is in series with the neck pickup. If you’re familiar with Bill Lawrence 5-way Telecaster wiring, it’s the same as position 4 from that. Long story short, it gives the Tele access to a Strat-like “quack” sound.

Here is the full wiring diagram I designed for this build, although I ended up deciding to flip the series/phase positions once I sat down with the soldering iron, and I also decided to reverse the controls completely since 99% of the time that blade switch won’t move.


So basically, the guitar has access to 6 tones:

1. Blade switch pos 1: Parallel wiring, LP toggle switch works as pickup selector
2. Blade pos 2: LP toggle switch works as normal but middle position is half out of phase (Strat sound) and the neck position has a bass cut (because of the series cap)
3. Blade pos 3: Series wiring, toggle switch can be used as a “kill” switch in the bridge position and provides the same series neck+bridge sound in middle/neck position

1. Bridge
2. Neck
3. Bridge + Neck, Parallel
4. Bridge + Neck, Parallel Half out of Phase
5. Bridge + Neck, Series
6. Neck + bass cut cap
7. Ground (kill position)

 

[bagman67]

Tidy work.

 

[Hodgo]

Thanks @bagman67, it’s something I keep working on. I kind of regret using cloth pushback for the switch jumpers, it’s hard to keep it from fraying at those sizes. Was thinking of applying wax to smooth the frayed ends.

 

[Rick]

nIce

 

[Hodgo]

Got my shipping notification! Body should be here Wednesday. The neck has also come in, it’s a beautiful chunk of roasted quartersawn maple with rosewood for the skunk stripe and truss rod plug.

 

[Rick]

Oooo .... pretty!

 

[Hodgo]

Here is the body - 2pc, 4lb 1oz roasted swamp ash.

 

[teleme01]

That is a damn good start

 

[ImCaptRaymondHoltWassup]

My upcoming build: Ebony fretboard w/ maple neck, no fret markers, strat headstock.
Mahogany body in matte blue ice metallic w/cream binding on top.
P90 neck pick up, tele in bridge, both by Callahan.
Mastery bridge, flirting with the idea of a bigsby but undecided at this point.

Ordered basically July 1st. Neck is already done. Thinking body will be Nov/Dec time frame, but I'm willing to be surprised