FINISHED: Plywood Telecaster rebuild. First guitar.

Asomodai

Grabbed the last of the parts I needed to finish the project. 

Orange Drop .033uf
NWG 3 Way Pickup Selector
Rustins GSheild Paint
2x Alpha Solid Shaft 250k Mini Pots (The Route is too small for full size)
SwitchCraft 1/4" Mono Jack
Old Timer "Incinerator" Alnico 2 Bridge Pickup
Artec Big Pole Alnico V Neck pickup
NWG J-22 Style Machine heads in Black.

longjaw

That finish looks pretty good to me!

Rocker

Looks pretty good to me too.

Asomodai

longjaw said:

That finish looks pretty good to me!

Rocker said:

Looks pretty good to me too.

Thanks gents. It's not exactly what I was hoping for, but it certainly has charm. 

Everything has arrived bar the bridge pickup. 

I have put 2 coats of Acrylic Varnish on everything with paint on it using the three pass per coat method.

I have also used conductive paint to shield the cavities and the underside of the scratchplate. Tuners have been installed and electronics screwed to the control plate. 

Just need to wait for everything to fully dry and I can begin drilling a couple of extra holes for the bridge and start wiring everything up.

Once done I will string up, then install the two string trees. 

Then a setup!

Asomodai

Today started off well. But eventually descended into a nightmare that probably wont end. All because of two screws!

I had all the parts apart from the bridge pickup and Cap. So I thought I would do the assembly now and do as much as I could of the wiring ahead of time. 

I drilled the additional two holes for the bridge and stuck the ground wire underneath it and fed through into the pickup cavity. I took all the electronics and soldered up what I could. 

The neck pickup screws don't catch on the pickup lug holes which very annoying, so I had to prop with some foam. Though I didn't put in enough so cant raise it very high. 





Installed the scratchplate, then decided to install the neck and neck plate having installed the tuners on the neck yesterday. 

So begins the ultimate screw up. 

I started screwing the screws into the neck, not realising two were longer then the other two that came with the plate. 

I had to torque them pretty hard, and sure enough lifted the fretboard and frets on both the bass and treble end cracking it in the process. 



I was dead gutted, so I thought I would clamp the frets down, which of course damaged the frets themselves as I was panicking and didn't use something large and flat to spread the pressure. I had to get the fret file tools out file down the treble side of the top frets. Just about managed it without having to replace the fret. But there isn't much life to them left.

To say I am gutted is an understatement, I felt I did really well throughout the project, but I effectively damaged my first guitar in an incredibly stupid way. I had never seen a neck plate with accompanying screws that had different lengths. 



So I decided to put it all together and just hope it will kinda work. despite the slightly lifted and cracked fretboard. 





So it... kinda plays. I need to level some frets again that are still a tad high. Not much more I can do about the cracks and the high fretwear up the dusty end. 

I only have the neck pickup in and it sounds fine, though when I switched to the middle position it was either quiet sound or non existent (No reason as to why it switches in and out) I have no idea what is causing that, maybe because the bridge pup is missing? I have checked a number of diagrams and I cant see what could be wrong. 

I need to realign the neck a little bit as the pocket favours the neck side. 

So yeah... I am pretty disappointed considering how much effort I put into it up until now. 

Asomodai

Ok! 

So this is pretty much finished bar replacing the hackneyed screws in the neck plate and the string retainer. I may also get a custom made scratchplate as the current sprayed one wont last. 

To sort out my fret screw-up I took it to Tim Marten who replaced the top 4 frets and installed the bridge pickup for me. She is not much of a looker (My fault!) But she certainly plays lovely! 

The Alegree Incinerator is balls out. It has the tele twang underneath it all due to the metal baseplate and 3 saddle bridge, but really aggressive sounding. The Artec Big Pole neck pickup is darker then I thought it would be, but has a really nice heavy blues style sound. 

Not sure if anyone's following this anymore, but here are some last photos. 

Final Spec: 

20 year old JHS "Vintage" Plywood Telecaster body and neck base. 
Wilkinson Half Tele Bridge
Northwest Guitar 3 way Pickup selector
Northwest Guitar J-22 Tuners
Alpha Solid Shaft 250k mini Pots. 
Switchcraft 1/4 Mono Jack socket
Artec Alnico V Big Pole Open top neck pickup
Old Timer "Incinerator" Hot Telecaster bridge pickup
Dunlop Strap Lock pins. 
No name cheap and cheerful string tree, control plate, knobs and the bloody nightmare neck plate. 









(Note the filler used for the fret, the fingerboard cracked quite badly there.)

Roland

That looks good.

longjaw

I like it, good job.

downbytheriver

Looks great to me