WezV

If you like the texas specials on the guitars in a shop then use those, you will probably find they sound even better on the guitar you make yourself. Dont worry about how vintage they are. Its a telecaster, they have been used for vinatge country twang and overdriven rock with just the standard pickups so you really cant go wrong. Although if you have the money i really would recommend these bare knuckle pickups - yardbird bare knuckle pickups - country boy

Make your self a nice cup of coffee then use the left over grinds. The idea is pretty much the same as replicating the stains you get on the bottom of a well used coffee cup. It workd great for plastic parts such as knobs and scratchplates but i aint sure it will give you good results on a lacquered body, it would probably be quite uneven and blotchy. I wouldnt do a full refinish but would consider spraying a toner over what you already have to get the colour you desire - if you can get the new lacquer to craze as well you will have a true relic finish. A slightly amber/brown toner on the neck will give the colour you are after, the body is more trial and error. I would avoid staining the neck directly because unless you are carefull it can get blotchy - much better to spray a toner obviously you could just play the thing till it goes yellow! This all depends on what finish is already on there, a nitro finish will turn yellow with sunlight and wear quite quickly.

Personally i set the saddles most of the way forward when placing a bridge, some like 1/4 of the total travel in front of the bridge, 3/4 behind. There should never be any need to move a saddle shorter than the actual scale length so it makes little sense having half the travel of the bridge never being used. Having said that i still wouldnt want to set it with the saddle all the way forward - just in case

Since you are scrapping the old nut this is a lot easier. You can saw the nut in half lengthways (from bass side to treble) with a fine toothed saw, then simply squeeze it together and it should pop out with very little clean up needed

I'm only 26!! 'Grumpy old man syndrome' sets in early round these parts, as do the beer bellies

I like the singlecut with the multipeice top - good use of wood! Do your necks go all the way through the middle or just part way through, it looks unusual whatever the join does.

I take it you mean the bit where the end of the fretboard overhangs the neck slightly. Sounds like you are worring about he wrong thing. The only thing you really need to worry about is getting the neck angle/depth of neck pocket correct so the strings will be the right height for the bridge and good playability. The gap between the fretboard overhang and body should only be small but isnt really an issue, not something you need to worry about yet!

I have used EMG's a few times and they are definatly a good quality pickup with a high quality sound. Personally i dont like them on my guitars because i prefer the imperfect sound of passives. I particularly dont like them when they are in a 68 black LP custom with a brass nut (yes, i know somebody with said guitar and he has only just been convinced to put it back to original. Luckily he still had the correct pickups). My favorite pickup maker at the moment is Tim from bare knuckle pickups. Not cheap but very, very nice! It just comes downn to personal preference, see what people you like are using, read the manufacturers blurb, read the reviews and make your decision based on that.

yeah, you hit it spot on. I work in a school all day (you wouldnt think it with my spelling & grammer!) and the kids just arnt prepared to do a single thing for themselves. I set my VI formers (16-18 yrs old) some research to do today - all i got was 'what page of what book is it in?' and ' which bit do i copy?'. I expect people of that age to know what research means and that i aint gonna do it for them. I did love my lego growing up, probably till i was too old really, i still have a star wars lego landspeeder on my shelf!. I also had a big thing for airfix kits (plastic toy planes and cars that you built yourself) and my dad used to build model planes with us from balsa wood, canvas and an elastic band. I also make a point of only buying 'creative' presents for my neices and nephews, although thats mainly so i can play with them

Perry, your way of working out neck angle is easily simplest and most straight forward i have seen. I have tried to talk people through Melvyn Hiscocks method before and we normally get there in the end but it can be a little frustrating! I will describe it with your method from now on ( strangly i have never read this thread before) Thank you for sharing it - its a shame people get so touchy about being asked to do something for themselves, isnt that what this game is all about.

The body shape and headstock really dont go together IMHO. like Bigtommyb said, the body looks very droopy - but if droopy is what you are after thats fine, but you need a droopy headstock to match. Personally i think you need to do a bit more drawing, i would try combining the back end of a non-reverse firebird with something like the front end from a strat or SG with more rounded horns. If you combine existing designs in this way you are more likely to end up with something around the right kind of size and shape - yours looks a little bulky around the horns to me. What you come up with doesnt have to be anything like the existing designs you borrow from but it is a good place to start. Once you have designed a few guitars it gets easier to do it without involving existing designs

I do like LP Jnr's, i like the natural mahogany body even if it is multi-piece. The bridge angle looks steep and the pickup looks a little far away - although i am sure the sound will be more versatile where you have placed it. It also looks a little strange because the controls are on an angle but thats ok - just not what i am used to. It looks like it should sound great!

The 'les trem' is certainly one of the easiest and least invasive ways of doing this, but it doesnt give you much more play than a bigsby and i think i would rather have one of those. I did fit a floyd rose to a cheap flying v recently, that involves plugging the TOM holes, routing for the trem and sorting the neck angle out for the new bridge. Its not too hard a job on a flattop guitar but i wouldnt want to try it on a carved top like a les paul

Theres something about these old unusual guitars i really love! This ones so abused i'm not sure were i would start, but i'm also guilty of destroying the occasional old & unusual guitar when i was young so we wont hold that against you. I guess really you need to decide what to do with the neck, i would be tempted to spray it black to match the body, it will never be maple again. I would try to find a way to not respray the body - seems silly when everyone pays so much for relic's.

Thats exactly how i do it, you usually find that drilling through the middle of the dot is enough to loosen the glue on the rest of it and it will either come out with the drill bit or need a gently pry in the hole you just made.

Thats the plan, i was only going to use the iroko becasue i saw it and i cant really turn down free wood, when i found the mahogany in the back i was much happier

Yeah, i should stress that i havnt actually used SS frets so take anything i say on the subject with a pinch of salt. I still think it would be unwise to use SS frets if you havnt done a fretjob before, not sure if you have or not but i am presuming you havnt from your first post

I have had old mahogany from window-makers before. I got 2 6"x6"x6' planks for free, not many people in the uk have handmade mahogany window-frames anymore and the stuff was top notch. I also recently found the woodstore at the school i work at. I went in because they had some iroko worktops from science rooms that caught my eye. whilst in there i found a large stack(50 or so) of 1" thick mahogany planks from old book cases, i am helping myself to that at the moment, the iroko can wait till that runs out. They also had alot of beech and a few old billets of mahogany as well. They dont do real wordwork at school anymore so i have been allowed to help myself

-for the first 20 fretbaords i slotted i did it by hand with a square and carefull measureing, this is the way melvyn hiscock shows in his book. It takes longer but it can work well. Its only recently i have got around to buying the stew-mac templates and mitre box and it definatly saves me some time. -The radius blocks are a good idea but if you want to save money look into making your own, there have been loads of discussions on doing this. - I like the fret press caul and wouldnt do without it but there have definatly been some good home made examples around here. -The caul is a good idea - fret end dressing files can be replaced with normal mini-trinagular files. - the fret cutter and tang nipper may be subsitututed for something cheaper - again do a search I would go on but basically the message is that the stew-mac stuff is good but if you want to save money you can do alot of the work with more basic/common tools - just do a search and you will see plenty of examples for most of the tools you have mentioned. you route your truss rod slot before cutting the neck out from the bank (when it is still rectangular), that way the fence of the router can run along the edge of the neck blank. Inlay is almost always done freehand with the dremel type tool in a router base.... unless you have access to cnc I have never used stainless wire but remember that its going to be a lot harder to work, which will also push the price of tools up since they will wear out quickly, and not everyone prefers the sound - apparently it can sound too bright!

I still dont get it but i am sure its clear in your head. The wood will effect the sound of an electric guitar, but we wont get into the whole debate about how much it affects it. I find maple makes a guitar that is too bright for my tastes.

I dont understand what you are saying about a pre-cut chamber but i guess that just the scotch, something i am guilty off sometimes as well. On the ebay link you gave us it says 7/8x15x33.5 at the top. but it then says it s 10.5x 33.5 in the description. If it is actually 15 wide, which i guess you checked, then you will be able to get two telecasters to fit onto that peice of wood, although it will be a tight fit. Then, from what you are saying, i guess you will cut two telecaster shaped peices of wood 7/8" thick and you plan on gluing these togther to make a body 1 3/4" thick. Thats fine and should work. If you want to route out each half of the body before you glue them together to make chambers, that will also work. So where does the pre-cut chamber come in! It is possible to make a guitar this way but it is not going to be easy and made out of soild maple it probably wont sound great either, but thats down to preference. It seems like you are going about this in a very difficult way.

that peice of wood is only 10.5" wide and 33" long, not really enough to get two tele's onto it so you can glue them together. As for the messed up body, if you want to save it you could cut it inhalf down the seam, re join the two halfs and glue back together. You would have to add a thin peice of wood to down the middle to replace the lost wood from sawing and joining so the neck still fit and the string-thru holes were still in the right place. Personally i would be more tempted to scrap it. And if the neck came from WD with a chip then send it back, if its not there fault then you can probably get a little bit of rosewood glued on there and reshape it to match the current fretboard.

does this mean i need to do something to put in for GOTM That thing looks really great, i love the beech top. I found a spare spalted beech top in my stack a few days ago, completely forgot it was there! Its not as nice as yours but still quite interesting, i might get around to using it now.

Good point Mattia, thats why i would never have even brought it myself. Ah well, i will delay my laminating antics for another week or so till the original recipe stuff turns up. I didnt ask my cousin how much titebond III he had ordered, but i reckon he will have got quite a lot - lucky i am doing my Kitchen soon i suppose.

Good to know that it can work but there is a lot more to worry about than invisible seams - creep, shelf life, strength, how easy it cleans up (wet and dry), how solid it dries,, etc.........