first build - thinline Tele

[DarkMark]

You’re done a great job with the burst. Well done.

[FrankenWashie]

That is a nice first up burst OTH. Good work!

[Old Tooth Hopkins]

Stuff ups happen!

Buffed it a bit too far and it’s a see through!


Need to to paint the side or leave it as relic.




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[Andy40]

Wow! so many expletives and not enough time!. you could sand back a bit and spot re-stain then refinish? I've done that before.

[Old Tooth Hopkins]

Build Diary:

-Applied cut and polish onto the guitar body and rubbed hard. Lesson learned: Should have wait until the clear cure more before starting as the cut and polish ate into the side a little bit.


The choice was, do I re-spray or keep going? I had about 2 weeks left before the baby comes, and if I don’t finish the guitar I probably never will. I decided to keep going to finish it off and maybe, one day, I can come back and re spray and polish.
The rest of the body comes up quite well – I could almost see my own reflection! There was still a bit more orange peel, which I can address when I come back in an indefinite time in the future.



-The rest of the body came together reasonably easily, just time consuming. Had a minor scare with the neck fitting but it was all good in the end.
-Electronics:

I set my goal very early on to have coil splitting so this guitar is as versatile as possible. The original goal was to have:

oPosition 1: Neck single
oPosition 2: Neck humbucker
oPosition 3: Neck & bridge humbucker
oPosition 4: Bridge humbucker
oPosition 5: Bridge single

I was much more confident with electronics than body and finishing, but the coil splitting took me a lot longer than I thought. DingoBass’s tutorial was great, but there were still come ambiguities about which wire and which. WeirdBits’ was also good, but by then I already followed DingoBass’. I managed to stuff up one of the stock pickups, glad I ordered spare humbuckers that had a higher resistance but the wiring within was too complicated to coil split. So I ended up not coil splitting it (neck). Position 1 is for the time being, a master kill switch which is not a bad arrangement.



Lesson learned: During the wiring, use alligator clips before soldering. I also learned that if I used a metallic material to knock the housing of the pickup there is a response, much easier than wiring all the strings on to test, then re-strung it each time. String changes and bigsbys aren’t complete best friends.

During the installation I realized the white pickguard that I custom made inversely affected the sunburst look. I decided to leave it off completely.



Current status:
It plays but the neck, string and bigsby are still adjusting to the tension so it doesn’t stay in tune well yet. I will also need to set it up properly. This is where I will leave it for the time being.









Future plans:

-Light sand and refinish with clear to clean up the corners.
-The current pickups levels are not completely balanced. I want to review this at a greater detail, it is probably due to the higher output neck pickup. I may request/buy another stock pickup from PitBull and install into the bridge.
-Rearrange the wiring in the cavities: I had to push and shove a little bit to avoid accidentally shorting out in the cavity. I want to arrange and re-organise the length of the wires to make sure it is as neat as possible.
-Re-configure the position 1 kill switch to another piezo pick up installed within the thinline F hole. If I am a little bit more adventurous I would see if the piezo can be connected to the tune-O-matic bridge ala some of the more high-end acoustic simulator pickup on electric guitars.
I admit this was a little bit of a rush job towards the end but happy with the overall outcome so far.



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[DarkMark]

Nice work Old Tooth Hopkins, but more importantly congratulations on growing your family by one more.