Sonics 5th build - The Ultracaster (with special sneak peak)

[FrankenWashie]

Lol *eyes 100 year old oak table in dining room*

If I take out a body blank from near the edge...I can claim it’s a hole to install a sewing machine lift to give her more working room for her dress making....that way she can’t be mad right?
🤔

[Grubsta]

That's looking really nice sonic love everything about this.

[wazkelly]

Lol *eyes 100 year old oak table in dining room*

That could end up being a very, very expensive scratch built body.

[Sonic Mountain]

Hah- from the divorce you mean? To be fair the table has seen better days, its copped a lot of use in the ~40 years its been in the family.

Apparently oak isn't that great for guitar building anyway....

[nitroburner1000]

The test run...
Attachment 25752

You could probably get another 7 blanks out of that table..lol

[Sonic Mountain]

Been away a few days and still trying to catch up on all the new posts here. So good seeing how active this community is.

Came home all excited to fit my bridge pickup and wire up the Sonicaster.. unfortunately I put everything away for 'safe keeping' in the event of a break in and I cannot for the life of me find the pickup

It's here somewhere. I left in such a rush the place is a disaster area so a big clean up is in order this afternoon after work. Hopefully it turns up then.

In the meantime enjoy this photo of it (and a few other goodies for the tool kit)

[Sonic Mountain]

It lives. Kinda.

A lightbulb finally went on and I remembered where I hid the pickup.

It's all wired up now and everything works. I've run out of time so apart from popping the e strings on and doing a quick 'Peter Gun' riff I haven't given it a work out. Looking and sounding good tho, I'll need to play with the pickup heights a bit to even out the output. I'll need to run over my earthing as I have a very slight buzz, I'm sure its the contact on the back of the volume pot. I'm always scared about putting too much heat in the casing and frying the pot. So I'll touch that up tomorrow and get onto some setup.

[michaelS31]

Looks awesome Sonic! Love the colour!!

Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk

[Grubsta]

Coming along great Sonic. This makes me want to add a TL to the to do list.

[Sonic Mountain]

Thanks guys. Grubsta I highly recommend the TL kits. They are simple but so satisfying. I never really got the appeal until I played the Major Mitchell for a while.

So this is properly together now. I think the higher string tree needs to come back a bit (annoying, I wasn't paying attention properly) but it seems OK for now. I've just done the first 'ballpark' setup and had a wail on it. It has the typical telecaster jangle about it for sure. My favourite setting by far is both pickups selected. The twang and chimey g sounds from the bridge and warm mellowness from the hum bucker is soooooo good. It's just a leftover PGB neck pickup, but I really like it.

Setup wise the nut needs to be lower. It was actually too low and I shimmed it so I need to split the difference there I think. The neck overall is great. It's really straight and I love how it looks. The headstocks certainly feels at home on the tele body. It is different, its ended up quite long really. If you look at the shoe gazer the low e string tuner is a lot closer to the nut. Apart from changing the positioning of the string trees it doesn't seem to be a problem so far.

The wilkinson bridge I'm a little less enthused with. I mean there is nothing wrong with it, but it doesn't seem to be much of a step up from the kit bridge. Eventually (once I have a drill press) I'm going to make it string through as the bridge has the holes for that - so that is a vote in it's favour. And it does look nicer. But functionally I don't see a massive improvement.

Anyway, I'll do some glamour pics a bit later. I've got some stickers to go on this one as well... just because I like stickers and this is the last one I'm building for myself for a bit.

Time to get the Steampunker done now.