Lyn #16 - Bev's Pulpit Tele

[Wayne.Mumford]

A top finish on that Rob, I will have to try the old Brasso on my next one,hopefully not too far away.
Wayno.

[wazkelly]

Hi Rob, thanks for the advice on your technique.

I have mainly used a brand new chux wipe folded over several times and wipe on a small amount at a time just like you do. It is usually around 'fold' lines where the body curves away leaving thinner edges where I seem to have had a few issues. Gotta say, for the most part it brings up the smoothest and shiniest surface which is still very soft to touch and not at all grippy as a lot of gloss finishes can be. Does a far better job that just using Meguiars. Just have to leave in the garage for a few days afterwards to allow fumes to dissipate.

Cheers, Waz

[robin]

@Pabs and Sonic
Thanks guys, much appreciated.

@Simon and Wazza
Thanks for the warning guys. I have used it on all my guitars and had no idea it could cause such damage. I will point that out as a warning in future posts. I would hate to feel responsible for ruining the finish on someone else's guitar.

@Wayne
Thanks Wayno.

Take note of what Simon and Wazza said above. Use it sparingly and wipe it off ASAP and you should be right. Works for me, and all my guitars.

@Wazza
I will probably still use it, but being even more mindful of a little goes a long way.

Yeah it stinks. One of the advantages of not having a workshop, I get to build my guitars outdoors. lol

Thanks again guys
rob

[robin]

Just a couple of small jobs today.

I don’t want the top too glossy so I tried a little furniture oil. A bit more glossy than I hoped but I think it will lose the shine fairly quickly.



The other little job was to shield the control and pup cavities.


Next week I will deal with the wiring and assemble the guitar and cut the bone nut.

I’m in the home stretch now.

[robin]

Well, finally the first of the hurdles with this build. There are always a couple aren’t there?


Minor Problem #1. Finished the assembly and did the wiring. Plugged her into an amp. Guitar knobs all the way to 11 (Spinal Tap anyone?), and……...nothing. Pulled out the lead and got a nice hum, plugged it back into the guitar nothing, nada, zilch. Ready to call it quits for the day, and I turned down the volume on the guitar just a tad and there was life. Turned it all the way down and I had full volume.


As this guitar will probably never (or seldom) be played I thought I would just use leftovers from my previous PBG builds. I must have accumulated dozens of pots as I always upgrade them with my builds. So I just grabbed a couple. Little did I know that I picked the only 2 left-handed pots in my entire collection. D’oh! As they are audio pots I can’t just swap the lugs over and I will have to replace them with righties. No big deal.


Minor Problem #2. Somehow I screwed up the neck pocket and the neck sits way too low in the body so I should probably sort out some shims for it. But as the shims would be more than a few mm thick they would be noticeable and detract from the overall finish. I had bought some brass compensated saddles so I thought I would just flatten the bottom of the saddles so they would sit lower. They were not expensive and if it doesn’t work I’ll just buy some more and shim the neck as a last resort.


Original string height at the 12^th fret > 3mm!!




Saddles before. As can be seen the height adjustment screws are already way to high, so I have ordered some shorter ones. That should stop the bleeding lol.




Hand filing the saddles reduced the height at the expense of some very sore fingers.




Saddles after filing




String height at 12^th fret now about 1.8mm




Today's job will be to cut the nut and replace left-handed pots.

[robin]

Time to do the bone nut.

If you are only building one guitar (good luck with that plan!!) or you are smart, you should probably buy one of the Pitbull pre-cut nuts. But if you intend doing more that one guitar and are a bit of a masochist like me, you’ll have a go at doing your own.

At this stage it is important to point out that if you want a good result unfortunately you will probably need a set of fret files. It is possible to do it without the proper files, but not recommended.

A Google search will show up a hundred different ways of doing nuts, so mine is probably not the best, but it works for me.

First off measure the height of your frets. Easy…... straight edge across 2 frets, and a feeler gauge to measure.



Then, with the nut in place, mark the fret height on it. A feeler gauge can be easily coaxed to bend to the radius of the neck by applying a wee bit of pressure on either end of the gauge.


The nut with a pencil line showing the approx height of the frets.


String spacing. It is important to get this right. There are plenty of calculations on the net, or buy a string spacing gauge. I use a simple layout plan that I downloaded off the net when I did my first nut. It has compensated string spacing (to take account of the different string gauges) and I have never felt the need to use anything more sophisticated, or expensive.


Then into the hobby vice, out with files, sandpaper and nut files and file away until you are close to (but obviously not below) the line.



Then ………………………...

[robin]

The final step is probably the most tedious. This is where the final adjustments are made. This is done with nut in place and the strings on the guitar.

I tend to “creep up” on the correct depth and this means stringing the guitar up to pitch, measure the height, release string tension, take string out of the nut, cut a bit deeper, put the string back into the nut, bring string tension back to pitch, re-check string height. Repeat, repeat and repeat for each string.

String action is a very personal thing, do you like high or low action? But nut height is not so arbitrary. If you get the nut height too low you’ll get fret buzz, or if you get it too high your guitar will never play in tune over the first 3 or 4 frets. So it is important to get this right. The good news is that it is fairly easy to set the nut height accurately.

The method I use takes all the guess work out of it.

With the strings tuned up to pitch fret a sting on the 3^rd fret then measure the gap between the string and the 1^st fret. You should aim for a gap of about the thickness of a piece of paper.

This shot was taken at the beginning of the process. You can see that the strings sit quite low in the nut. When finished all excess nut material above the string will be removed so that the strings are only half "buried" in the nut. I'll post a photo tomorrow when I have (hopefully) finished the nut.



Do that for all 6 strings and yer done.

Hoped this was of some help to somebody.

Cheers
rob

[blinddrew]

Certainly helpful for me, thanks.

[robin]

You're welcome Drew. Don't take it all as gospel though and do some research. But I've fine tuned it to work for me.

rob

[robin]

Started this build back in late January, but had a few hiccups along the way and some personal stuff, but she is finally finished. All up just over 100 hours build time. Which is pretty much on average for my semi-scratch builds.

I must admit that I am very happy how she turned out. Absolutely my favourite guitar, and if I hadn’t promised it to Bev it would be a keeper. But it will mean so much more to Bev so I will gladly hand it over. Hopefully she will like it.

All stock standard Pitbull parts with the addition of a neck pick-up ring and some brass compensated saddles.

If it was my guitar I would have upgraded most of the hardware, but as she will probably rarely be played I thought I would leave it stock for the time being. That being said I am really happy (and impressed) how good she sounds. I have no idea how anybody can intonate a standard 3 saddle Tele but with the addition of the compensated saddles she is near as perfect along the whole length of the fretboard.

If I get a chance I will do my usual lame attempt at a sound demo.

Well, they say that if there are no pictures is never happened, so here’s the pics.














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