Mini-Tele - Part 3: A splash of color

Subtle...

As previously mentioned - my son asked for a gold guitar.  

I said, "Everything gold?"

He said, "Everything!"

I said, "...okay."

I said, "...are you sure?"

He said, "I'm sure!"

(editor's note - when I told him the humbucker wasn't going to be gold - he got upset)

Okay.  Here we go!

Gold digger

Two things:

1) I've never spray painted a guitar before.  This is my fifth build (sixth if you count the incomplete Les Paul that still sits on top of my fridge) and I've finished all of them with stain, dye, or shellac under a Nitro finish.  I've got nothing against paint - it's just that all of my builds to date have been made with fairly attractive wood that I wanted to showcase and not hide under paint.  So this is new territory for me (read: plenty of NEW mistakes for me to make).

2) The medium of a blog is rife with dishonesty.  I didn't take a lot of photos of the process of painting the guitar.  So, it looks like this went swimmingly.  I can attest that it did not.  Also, time is a plaything in the blog medium.  This thing sat for months in my garage waiting for me to get my backside in gear and finish it.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics...

In brief:  I painted this with a generic gold color I purchased at Lowes and neither I nor my son was all that impressed.  It was only after stumbling on a really metallic gold paint (by accident in A.C. Moore) that we got to the color you see now.  Then, as I was preparing to spray a lacquer finish on it - I decided to wipe it down with some naphtha.  ...It had loads of dust (and cobwebs) on it from sitting all summer in my garage and I wanted a clean surface to spray on.  Yeah, it turns out that naphtha will strip spray-paint off like nobody's business.  So, I had to paint the guitar a third time.  Only this time the temperature had dropped and I was spraying in temps way too cold for rattle cans.  So, I'm not confident in how well the paint bonded to the previous coats.

When I finally did get to spraying lacquer - I was using a new brand - Watco - Lacquer, Gloss, Spray

...Let's just say - I'll never be using that brand again.  Stick with Behlan's Stringed Instrument Lacquer, kids.  It works!

I had already started spraying the neck with Behlans so I decided to not mix the streams with a different lacquer on the neck.  In the end, the body got 8 to 10 coats of Watco and the neck got 8 to 10 coats of Behlans.  The neck looks great (even though I used steel wool to dull the finish) and the body looks barely passable.  I never even finished polishing the body as weird black spots were starting to show up under the finish as I waxed on/waxed off.  This could have been the spray-paint I used, the temperature at which I sprayed things, or the lacquer.  Seeing as the neck had none of these issues and the only difference was what lacquer I used - you be the judge.

How you doin'?

With regards to the neck.  I did a fair amount of work to it.  I received it with a badly damaged finish (which I expected for $25).  I sanded off the existing finish and also reshaped the neck a bit.
Knowing that this will be a first guitar and not likely to be used for more than a year or two in this household - I went for comfort over perfection.  I skinny-ed down the neck at the 1st and 2nd frets
so that it would fit in my son's hand and perhaps make it possible for him to play first position (e.g. cowboy) chords.

Can't complain

I also worked on the fret ends quite a bit.  The fret ends were sticking out like barbed wire - so I filed those down and polished the frets as well.  I did a little fret leveling but not much.  If he gets to the point where he's ready to start ripping out an Angus Young solo - I'll dress these frets to perfection.  For now, the neck fits in his hand, won't cut him, and is mostly in tune.

Had some work done?

I also inlaid an Irish coin into the headstock because for some reason that has become my thing.  In this case, this is the first time I've used legal tender.  This is a 10 cent Euro coin.  I used it because it is gold colored.  It was a fabulous piece of good luck that I had a drill bit that was almost the exact size of this coin.  I'm happy with this part of the build.

So, while it's not perfect - the guitar now has a finish.  It's time to assemble it!

Mini-Tele Part 2: Cultural Appropriation

Theft

Never let it be said that a DIY blog about building guitars can't be socially relevant.

Yeah, I can't believe I typed that sentence either...

So what are we looking at?  It's a neck plate, dummy.  No really, it's used for screwing the neck onto a guitar body. And speaking of screwing - it is also a bit of Welsh culture and Druid mythology that I'm taking without asking.  So, for all you Welsh Druids out there - I'm gonna steal your culture.  Look out!

What you are actually looking at is the Druid symbol of the Welsh word - Awen.  Awen means "inspiration" - usually of a poetic nature.  I guess the Druids liked the word and decided it needed a symbol to go with it.  And who are we to judge?

Great Expectations

I thought it would make an interesting image on a neck plate and back in 2015 planned for it to go on the first guitar I finished that year - hence the 2015-001.

(Editor's note - no guitars were finished in 2015).

It just so happened to be a gold neck plate - so it's perfect for this build.  Better late than never!

I like the cut of his jib

Speaking of necks - we're gonna need a place to put that thing.  I routed out the neck pocket on this body blank using the process I have used on the last couple of builds that I've worked on:  Trace the outline of the neck shape on a piece of particle-board (or plywood) and cut out that shape with a jigsaw.  Then use that shape as a tracing template for my router.  What you can't see in the above picture is that everything to the left of that last fret is the overhang.  The thickness of the whole neck minus the thickness of the overhang is how deep the neck pocket needs to be routed - so that the overhang sits flush to the body.

Flush

As is quite typical at this point - things fit pretty well.  The neck fits in the pocket nice and tight and the neck is straight and level.  It's only later - when I start monkeying with things - that I'll mess it up!

"Aren't you a little short for a StormTrooper?"

 As you can see - this is a short-scale thing we're building here.  A normal guitar has a scale length (the distance from the bridge to the nut) - or total string length of 24.75 to 25.5 inches.  This puppy will be about 20.5 inches.  Also, the width and depth of the neck are much smaller than a normal neck.  Hopefully, this will make it easier for little hands to hold it.

Diggin' Holes

In addition to the neck pocket, I also routed out the hole for the pickup.  I'm going to go with a Humbucker for this build for two reasons: I already have one left-over from another build and humbuckers are quieter than single-coil pickups (as in they don't hum as much - hence hum-bucker).
I already have a humbucker routing template so this went fairly quick.

Diggin' More Holes

 I also drilled the hole for the input jack (where the guitar cable plugs into the body). If you look at the center of the hole you'll see a little light.  That's the pickup cavity in the previous picture.
The below picture is a detail shot of this.  I chose to go really primitive with the electronics for this build as I didn't want to overwhelm my Son with switches and knobs and I didn't want to overwhelm myself with soldering headaches.

Holes inside holes.

When I'm done with this build it will have one pickup, one volume knob, and an input jack.  Low-tech but just enough to do some damage.

Part 7: Mistakes Were Made...Part 1

So, if you are playing the home game - here's where we stand...
The wood was glued, traced, sawed, routed, drilled, routed again, and sanded. If I were this piece of wood - I'd ask for my money back.

At this point in my build I took a two-week detour. I put the guitar together. It made little sense at first (and I have no pictures to document it) but I assembled the guitar. I put the neck on the body, I wired up the electronics, and I plugged that sucker in! It was fun and I have no regrets but it did put me 'off-schedule' by a couple of weeks while I was enjoying my new Tele. But seriously, I wanted to make sure that everything fit - that the body and neck pocket were lined up correctly and that the action and intonation could be properly set-up. My thought-process was that if I waited until after I stained and lacquered the body I might miss an opportunity to fine-tune the shape and then have to sand or reshape a body that has been 'finished.' I was guessing that once I got to the lacquering/finishing stage I wouldn’t want to sand the body too much. Ha! Little did I know...

As a side note - the guitar set up well and sounded pretty raunchy (that's a good thing) but putting the neck on the body did highlight an area that needed to be looked at - the neck pocket.

The neck itself was straight but there were a couple of 'dead-spots' on the neck right where the neck joined the body. When the notes were played (or fretted) they would not ring out clearly. This was due to the strings buzzing on another fret somewhere. The problem wasn't based on string height or the straightness of the neck but rather the angle of the entire neck in the neck pocket. I read somewhere (maybe Steward McDonald) that the neck may need to be shimmed so that it is angled a bit more in the pocket itself. In effect the neck as a whole is either pointing up or down too much in the pocket and I need to adjust it - hence the shims. This is where the fine-tuning comes in. I've read of people putting thin slices of wood, metal even matchbook covers on one side of the neck pocket (sandwiched in between the neck and the body) to angle the neck just a little to remove the dead spots. Matchbook covers! Crazy Talk!

Another piece of information I gleaned from assembling the guitar prior to staining and finishing it was that I had placed the bridge too close to the neck. When deciding where to place the bridge on the body of your guitar you have to know the "scale length" you are using. The scale length is the distance from the nut on the neck to the place on the guitar where the string makes contact with the bridge (usually the saddles). Fender Strats and Teles are approximately 25 1/5 scale. Gibson guitars are a little over 24 inch scale and PRS guitars are somewhere in between (more proof that Mr. Smith was trying to find the market in the middle of these two products). I measured the distance from the nut to the 12th fret (on the neck) and then placed the bridge that same distance from the 12th fret to the body. It's supposed to measure something close to 25 1/2 inches from the nut to the bridge. So I did this but when I placed the bridge - I placed it so that the holes that hold the bridge to the body were 25 and 1/2 inches from the nut. I should have been measuring to the saddles - not the holes. It's not the end of the world but it meant that I would have to alter the springs that control the saddle positioning on the bridge. I clipped the springs in half, which should allow me to position the saddles directly above the holes that hold the bridge to the body - thereby giving me a 25 1/2 inch scale. For the blissfully ignorant this fine tuning of string length and saddle positioning allows me to ensure that any note played on the neck in tune. If the intonation of the string is off less than or more than 25 1/2 inches - notes will be sharp or flat.

So, I was able to identify a couple of things that I should fix prior to finishing the body. I thought to myself, "I made some goofs but nothing major. So far, so good!"

...but the doozey was still yet to come.