Three or Four Clumsy Teles

[Charlie H 72]

Hey all

I'm posting a lot! Making up for lost time or something. But I managed to twist a few arms and get some friends to let me build something for them. Three similar T-Types, with different colors & configs. Budget for the three guitars is $1200 total. (for materials - not paying myself, just funding the habit!)

Looking forward to making myself do things the right (repeatable) way and being thorough with templates and jigs. I always seem to go the "fast way" and chisel out a control cavity or something, but having to do everything three times will be a good argument for taking the time to set things up.

 

Here's a quick render -
 

Orange is for H and is going to be a hi-vis SS 8 string (with doubled D&G using banjo tuners), maple board & custom bridge. Maybe mirrored pickguard too.

Blue is for J and is a HS with a push-pull coil split, a standard hardtail bridge & rosewood board,

Green is for E and is a SS with ebony board and custom bridge. 

All poplar bodies & maple necks, 1 vol 1 tone. Orange and green going for Wilde microcoil pickups, blue undecided.

I might make one for myself too - oiled ash body, walnut neck, ebony board, custom ebony bridge, black or ebony hardware. Could be really hot but also hard to justify.

 

I have to figure out the best spot for a switch (or two) on these. I'm thinking mustang/jaguar style slide switches on the bass side of the strings, but open to other ideas. (Any exp. with mini switches for pickups?)

 

Also anybody have an idea for what to name this model? Preferably without "tele" or "caster" in the name

 

 

[Charlie H 72]

This could also be an ok switch layout? (Also note longer neck, neck pickup placement)

[Bizman62]

8 hours ago, Charlie H 72 said:

(Any exp. with mini switches for pickups?)

I've got a 70's - 80's Eko CX7 Artist featuring three single coils with individual on-off mini switches. There's a fourth switch as well and it seems to change the tone a bit but I don't know what it does - maybe it's a phase switch. Toggling one pickup on or off is as fast as with any switch but changing between neck and bridge can't be done instantly in the middle of a solo. Versatility has its cost...

[Charlie H 72]

Thanks biz-your input is always appreciated. I might stick with a 3-way slide switch for now. I really wish I could find push-button switches like vintage teiscos… maybe there is a reason they stopped making them?

I have neck and body blanks all glued up and dimensioned - ready to turn blocks into guitar shapes!

Ooooh poplar! 

now here’s a question

I could either

a) cut everything on CNC 

b) cut templates on CNC and then proceed like a “normal guitar”or 

c) combination 

I’m ruling out A because that will take 3+ hours per body and I think I can do better. And I may be making more of these in the future so I don’t want to get attached to a slow process. Plus the CNC I have at my disposal is temperamental and I don’t enjoy hanging out with it too much.

B-not so bad, rough cut blank, then profile w/ template, then forstner cavities, then rout w/templates. The usual.

Or C - CNC all cavities and a .25” outline carve for the profile of the guitar, (90 minute cut) then use the template bit on the router to clean up the edge accordingly.

note that I will have to rout the control cavity from the back using templates the traditional way no matter how I build the guitar.

 

thoughts? Which is likely to be faster & cleaner, given that I am repeating 3x-possibly more? How long does it take all you pros to rout a body using templates? 

 

Edited February 22, 2022 by Charlie H 72

[curtisa]

I'd go for option B. If you're using a CNC you don't trust to make a small run of identical guitars, the last thing you want to do is blow one of your body blanks if the CNC decides to have a brainfart. MDF templates are cheap and easy, and it won't be a total disaster if the CNC makes a mess of one.

[Bizman62]

9 hours ago, Charlie H 72 said:

I really wish I could find push-button switches

You mean rocker switches? There's lots of variations available, supposedly an on-none-on switch would be best for that based on the photos of Teisco switches. The local automotive store might be a good source!

It just so happens that there was an image on today's newspaper featuring Heikki Silvennoinen posing with his main axe, a Flying Finn Custom which seems to be even further customized with three rocker switches, in this case on-off. That type should be much faster to switch during playing than the mini switches of my Eko:

[Charlie H 72]

12 hours ago, curtisa said:

I'd go for option B. If you're using a CNC you don't trust to make a small run of identical guitars, the last thing you want to do is blow one of your body blanks if the CNC decides to have a brainfart. MDF templates are cheap and easy, and it won't be a total disaster if the CNC makes a mess of one.

Thanks - thats kind of where I was leaning, and a little reassurance solidifies that. 
 

11 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

You mean rocker switches? There's lots of variations available, supposedly an on-none-on switch would be best for that based on the photos of Teisco switches. The local automotive store might be a good source!

 

I like those! I was thinking of a similar looking plastic rectangular button that you push in for "on" and then push in again for "off" - one for each pickup. They have them on crappy 70s solid state organs, too.

Maybe I could use two push-push pots? could be nice - very minimal. Going to rout for a normal switchcraft slider and see if anything else comes my way. There's also always the option to make a cap for the slider. When there are so few elements on the face of the guitar these little things make a big difference!

[curtisa]

10 hours ago, Charlie H 72 said:

I was thinking of a similar looking plastic rectangular button that you push in for "on" and then push in again for "off" - one for each pickup. They have them on crappy 70s solid state organs, too.

They should be available at most electronics component retailers. Try searching for 'latching pushbutton' or 'alternate action pushbutton'.

[Charlie H 72]

9 hours ago, curtisa said:

They should be available at most electronics component retailers. Try searching for 'latching pushbutton' or 'alternate action pushbutton'.

I was looking for something like these (the "custom voices" switches) but most of the latching pushbutton switches I could find are a little too sleek for this application. I could make my own switch caps though.

 

The more I think of it more I want to keep the minimal look and use push-push pots. The options with push-push would be:

Volume selects neck/bridge, tone selects one/both.

OR

Volume is bridge on/off Tone is neck on/off  (I saw an old TDPRI thread where someone diagrammed switching like this w/ push push pots but also included a series/parallel option if both are up or down - that might be cool?)

 

I could also do an M/N blend pot instead of a tone knob. 

 

Does anybody have experience with either blend pots or push-push pots for switching?

 

[Charlie H 72]

 

Here are some thoughts on switch location -- If I decide to use switches at all. Thanks for entertaining my rambling!

[Bizman62]

26 minutes ago, Charlie H 72 said:

Does anybody have experience with either blend pots or push-push pots for switching?

I did one for my Strat, blending the bridge and neck whenever either one is chosen. I followed this Breja video:

A Tele should be even easier! For my current build I ordered some slider pots but they never arrived for some reason. Might even have been sent back by the Posti, it may have been in the early days of the current customs regulations.

[Charlie H 72]

Cool! Do you find that blending is intuitive & easy to use in a live/band setting?

[Bizman62]

I'm not that good a player that I could turn knobs or switch a lever during playing. Also, it takes some time to figure out which direction the blender works when the switch is either at bridge or neck position. But I can tell that just a tiny bit of the other pickup adds loads of richness to the tone! Even if you don't turn it while playing you may find a sound that cuts through without extra volume.

For a two pickup Tele you shouldn't even need the switch! That's why I would have liked a slider pot, I would have put it into the place of the blade switch. The lever would tell if the sound comes more from one end or the other. A center notched one would have been even better. Slider pots seem to be hard to find in ohmages used for guitar pots. I'm not sure if that was even necessary, though. The electricians here should be able to tell that.

Another thing is that there's dedicated blender pots to keep the volume consistent. Mine is a standard pot and I can't hear any difference in the volume levels, guess it's partially a wiring thing.

[curtisa]

11 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Another thing is that there's dedicated blender pots to keep the volume consistent. Mine is a standard pot and I can't hear any difference in the volume levels, guess it's partially a wiring thing.

The other key feature of the dedicated blender pot is that it can fully fade out each pickup at the extremes of the pot's rotation. The version in the video will never allow you to fully achieve an un-blended pickup selection; there will always be some degree of the neck pickup signal passing through with the bridge (and vice versa) when the blend is turned down to a minimum. Whether that matters to you or not is more down to taste.

 

13 hours ago, Charlie H 72 said:

I was looking for something like these (the "custom voices" switches)

You could always do something heretical and go out an buy one of those crappy old organs. They're usually super cheap , or even completely free, because no-one really wants them anymore. I picked up one to have fun with about 15 years ago from the local waste recovery centre for about the price of a six pack of beer and ended up gutting it, extracting all sorts of goodies in the process - switches, shielded wire, pots, capacitors, obscure ICs...

[Bizman62]

39 minutes ago, curtisa said:

The other key feature of the dedicated blender pot is that it can fully fade out each pickup at the extremes of the pot's rotation. The version in the video will never allow you to fully achieve an un-blended pickup selection; there will always be some degree of the neck pickup signal passing through with the bridge (and vice versa) when the blend is turned down to a minimum.

That's true. When tapping the pickup with a steel object it can be heard in "zero" position as well.

The sound isn't bad, though. When our Master Veijo Rautia who is a pretty well known pickup builder tested it he wondered why bother making pickups for €100 a piece when a €30 set of Warmans sound that good! The bleeding blender seems to add beefiness to a single pickup and although the difference in the tapping sounds in zero position seems to be quite minimal, I'd say about half or 1/3 of the volume, there's some audible difference in the actual sound even from 0 to 1 in a scale up to 10. 

Obviously I can't tell how the neck or bridge pickups would sound individually but the middle one doesn't seem to be of another series despite being isolated from the the other two.

[Charlie H 72]

On 2/25/2022 at 1:44 AM, curtisa said:

You could always do something heretical and go out an buy one of those crappy old organs.

glad you got your hands on one! Sounds like fun. I don’t have the space for it right now though-living in an apartment. I think I’m going to go with push/push for pickup switching and see where that leads. I’ll try it on my own guitar first. Seems more workable than having an infinite number of settings on a blend knob.

got some work done today -all 3 bodies roughly at this point. J with the blu guitar has been helping out which is really fun.

struggling with some tearout   It’s a sharp stewmac straight cut bit that I’m using. Thankfully these are painted and I can use filler, but I’d prefer for them to come out cleaner. Any tips?

 

 

[Charlie H 72]

Here's a render of the new bridge design - it will be much thinner than the last guitar with a cavity under it for the rest of the pickup.  There will be a slope from bridge to pickup to make a little more room for picking. The brass saddle will have hex slugs for height adjustment, and the string thru holes will be seated in an elongated recess. Think these are mostly going to be CNC jobs - probably will cut the taper by hand though. No need to screw them down to the body- they will sit tightly in a recess and string pressure will hold them down. 

[Bizman62]

21 minutes ago, Charlie H 72 said:

Seems more workable than having an infinite number of settings on a blend knob

That's so very true! Actually it reminds me of a pocket camera way back when film was still a common thing: It only had two focuses, normal/wide and tele or in digits 45 and 100 mm. The logic was that people usually don't use the in-between lengths of a zoom lens, it's only the extents that matter. As I said I like the bleeding of the other pickup as it adds a bit of warmth to the bridge and a bit of snap to the neck pickup. There's a sweet spot where I tend to turn the knob, about 1/4 or so. A solid component doing just that would be enough for my needs...

29 minutes ago, Charlie H 72 said:

I’d prefer for them to come out cleaner. Any tips?

Slower feeding speed or more RPM, maybe? And shallower cuts, either by doing multiple passes starting way outside the template or sawing the outlines more accurately before routing. A four flute router bit might also help, or a spiral cutter. And of course the grain direction matters.

[Charlie H 72]

 

I read through this thread by Curtisa - 

I have been doing cuts in one direction only, taking just a little at a time. Doesn't seem to help in the places where I'm "cutting uphill" so maybe I need to get a bottom bearing bit as well and be able to flip the thing when I need to. Next time! For now there is filler and sandpaper

[Charlie H 72]

Hi everyone 

it’s been a minute! I finished the first one of these a bit ago-didn’t get great pics but here’s a little progress report. I have time since I’m stuck at home I finally got the ole virus

finished it while dog sitting for my sister and brother in law. Here it is w it’s new owner (also a new guitar player!) was very excited to hand it off. Finish is general finishes basil milk paint and high performance matte clear. It was ok to put on but definitely some brush strokes. Kind of ok w it on this design though  

Edited July 8, 2022 by Charlie H 72

[Bizman62]

You definitely have found your style! I'm not going to copy it but I really like it.

I was going to mention about these:

but then I took another look at this:

[Charlie H 72]

Thanks biz! Yes I enjoy doing multiples-setting something up just right and then doing it a few times in a row is really satisfying to me-as is finding my way to that setup, which this project has mostly been, oops! 

I finally got the body templates going pretty smoothly though-I’ll post pictures soon but basically there are 2 templates that register on the pickguard screws for the body profile and pickup/bridge routs, and the back template for the control cavity registers on the string-thru holes. I drill the pot mounting holes first as a gut-check that the control cavity is at the right angle. 

I’m having some difficulty with the truss rod though, as I had the bit jump out and cut thru the template today  . I think I need to take shallower passes which will require shimming the template/making a thicker template. Debating whether to epoxy/bondo this error or to just start over. It’s pretty big, and I don’t have much time in the neck yet. It will probably take just as long to fix it as it will to start fresh… so that’s likely what I’ll do. Does anybody have experience cutting TR channels with a template-bearing bit, or is the typical approach to use the base of the router on an offset template?

[Bizman62]

3 hours ago, Charlie H 72 said:

Does anybody have experience cutting TR channels with a template-bearing bit, or is the typical approach to use the base of the router on an offset template?

At the shop we have one single template for truss rod channels and it's very rarely used! That's mainly because most of us use two-way rods and the template is curved for a single action rod channel. It's designed to be used with a collar instead of a bearing bit.

The way we were taught to rout the channel is to do it at an early stage when the neck blank still has a straight edge. That allows for using the adjustable fence attached to the router base. @nakedzen has a good picture about that in his current build:

In case the neck already is cut to the wedge shape, an external beam can be used as a guiding rail. In that case you'd run the straight edge of the router base against that instead of using the adjustable fence.

[Charlie H 72]

Interesting! I don’t think I’ve seen that sort of router guide. I would have to use the beam method as I am cutting the necks out of the minimum width board which requires that they are cut on an angle. I am going to try the thicker template method today but if that doesn’t work I’ll be going with the base & beam 

[Bizman62]

4 hours ago, Charlie H 72 said:

I don’t think I’ve seen that sort of router guide.

Wow! At the workshop we have Elus similar to the picture, plus a DeWalt and a small Hitachi. They all have that. Not to mention that my sub €50 router branded to a Swedish chain has one as well. My Makita circular hand saw has one and my cheap handheld electric planer and my cheapest possible scroll saw.