Telecaster Custom Build

Ok, so every project ends with lessons learned.  If it doesn't, you aren't working hard enough or you have been doing it too long and need to move on to something else.  Me, on the other hand, I end most projects with plenty of lessons; though I try not to, I make mistakes!  And while not always sure that I will try again and benefit from the experience, there is no point in repeating what is avoidable.  I often try new things and move on to the next project, so mistakes are common along the way.  Here's how you can benefit from mine.

YouTube is a great resource for so many things.   I, like most guitarists I think, look at guitar set up as some sort of black art requiring decades of apprenticeship and a little magic voodoo powder.   Well, I got over that!  It actually entails very few adjustable parts, and once you understand what your objective is for each step it can be accomplished easily with a little time and patience (now this all goes without saying that a good neck with a decent fret job should be your starting point!).

Final assembly involved many straggling tasks not yet done or committed to, in addition to the obvious stringing the neck up and plugging it in to watch the sparks fly (hopefully not literally, although there is always the possibility I guess…..!).  This project had been two months in the making at this point, and I was really eager to actually play it.  I decided not to wait for weeks on the headstock paint as I had done for the body.  After the headstock was sanded and polished, it was game-on for the final build.

Pickguard style? Given that this was my own design brief, and I wanted to see enough of the wood grain, I knew that I would be making modifications to the pickguard.  And since I'd moved the control cavity position this would have to be accommodated.  I found a smaller than standard ('F-hole') shaped pickguard for a really good price and held it up to the body and neck to get a sense of where it needed to be trimmed. 

Soldering the pups was actually one of the most relatively easy aspects to this entire build.  There are good wiring diagrams online, but I really relied on my intuition and a good multimeter.  The switch was the hardest part, only in that there are 8 terminals coming from it while there are only three leads connected to it!  And I wanted to ensure that the forward position went to the neck pup and the rearward position went to the bridge pup.  I easily isolated which terminal did what.  After realizing that each pup connected to two terminals, it was easy to work out which ones would have the right pup active in what position - including both at the middle switch position.

The cautions expressed in countless YouTube videos are well founded here.   Careful prep and wearing gloves are certainly ‘musts’. You might also wonder, if you reviewed the post chronology, why so much time had passed between this and the previous blog post.  Mostly this was in order to allow the lacquer (clear coat) ample drying time - 2 weeks seemed like the expected duration, and I essentially adhered to this.  It was also given that I had little experience using dyes and preparing a surface for lacquer and polish.