Teleburster TL-1A aka G-special

Hey Scott, your "how to" is great. I love the way you've put it all together with the mods. Be really keen to hear the different colours you get out of her.

A bit more to do before I can finally start assembling this thing. More excruciating detail ;)

Copper shielding for all cavities, with ice-cream sticks and a few pieces of dowel as the instruments of choice for the smoothing. mmm… coppery. You have to be a little careful with this stuff as the edges can be razor sharp and it is very easy to slice a fingertip (think paper-cut except done with a razor blade).

http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-con...ielding_03.jpg


Installed shielding link wire to the neck cavity, ground wire for the bridge, and shielded output wire to a switchcraft jack with an electrosocket mount. I could have just connected a wire to the bridge cavity shielding which would then ground the bridge, but I'd prefer to ground the bridge directly and have it provide the link to the cavity shielding.

http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-con...ielding_04.jpg


As the cavity for the output jack is pretty snug I decided to do that bit extra and heatshrinked not only the hot, but also the ground and the outside arm for the tip, just to be safe. That way, nothing should be able to accidentally short the hot (hopefully), even if the wires get wrenched around.

http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-con...ielding_05.jpg

Tested the continuity of the shielding and links with my multimeter, and also checked that output hot was isolated, and it all seems good to go. Just need the pickups in place and all the fixed wiring will then be ready to connect to the control plate.

Time to add some jewellery to the headstock. A final check of the position of the Gotoh tuners, using a plastic ruler and square so I don't mark the finish, checking spacing and alignment. Near enough.

http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-con...ardware_01.jpg


I'm really paranoid about snapping tuner screws so I was very careful to double-check that each hole was deep enough and then used screw starters and the actual screws with candle wax to gradually prep the holes before actually installing the tuners. Once the tuners were installed successfully, I repeated the process with the string trees. I know that roller trees are overkill on a hardtail, but I wanted to test what these ones were like and see if they had any impact on tuning.

http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-con...ardware_02.jpg

http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-con...ardware_03.jpg

Awesome work Scott. Thanks so much for the how to on cutting pickguards from a template. Really motivated to get into it myself now. The shielding looks great and I also love the recessed output jack. Nice!

cheers,
Gav.

Hey Scott

Classy stuff! Some really terrific material in this thread. I was thinking that it would be sad if your "making of and use of templates" got 'lost' inside this thread and hence, to ensure you get te credit you deserve, when you have time could you post a thread specifically on the process you followed. Basically if you can Start a new thread and then cut and paste your already detailed info?

Thanks

Gav T, thanks, and Gav B if you think it's worthy of a separate thread I'll see what I can manage when I get a chance. There's a few aspects that probably should be expanded upon.

i do think it's worth of it's own thread as I too am inspired to make a few!!

looking very smick Scott, good idea about posting a separate thread for your templates

This will be a Supertele when it's finished, which looks like like being pretty soon now.
Love seeing how meticulousy you go about things.

Yeah, please do a thread on "how to" by all means.

Your methods have motivated me to look into building or buying a routing table . . . I already have a cheap plunge router plus a Dremel with a router attachment, so it's time to get on it . . .

awesome attention to detail, Scott, you are the shielding king!