How soon we forget, Wokks ;) Volume only/Volume & TBX/Volume, TBX & Treble Cut
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How soon we forget, Wokks ;) Volume only/Volume & TBX/Volume, TBX & Treble Cut
Oh you have to finish this. This has been the most intense and informative build diary I have followed. Lots of great ideas, with lots of great tips on how to achieve them.
She is a weapon of beauty and we need to hear her sing to our souls. Scott plug in your desire to hear her play and make it so. Man she needs to breath......this girl is gonna wail.
Updates probably aren't too far away Ozz.
So, where were we...
Well, it's been a while so I guess I better see if I can get this one over the line. Plus, Wokka has been fretting for an update for long enough.
Quick summary for new players:
- Build started October 2014
- Testing an early Beta version of Dingotone orange (already 6 months old when I got time to test it)
- TL-1TB kit had some glue issues and needed some tweaking
- Re-bound body with white binding and bound F-hole
- Re-drilled and counter-bored tuner holes
- Shaped body for curved neck plate
- Thinned neck profile
- Plugged and re-drilled bridge post holes for roller bridge
- Adjusted neck pocket to slightly increase neck angle
- Replaced side dots with white MOP
- Added headstock flamed maple veneer
- White MOP headstock inlay
- The usual thread jacking shenanigans from Wokka ;)
- Modified Surf 90 pickups for 4-way switching
- Custom wiring (diagram) with:
- Surf 90 pickups with Tele 4-way switching (bridge, bridge + neck parallel, bridge + neck series, neck)
- Neck phase reversal push/pull
- Modified Fender TBX tone control (bass cut <-0->treble cut)
- Treble cut filter cap with On/On/On switch (Volume only, Volume & TBX, Volume & TBX & Treble cut)
- Overconfidence and ambition to try and fit it all into a standard Tele cavity
- One stain coat of Dingotone Beta orange on body and headstock face
- Two Intensifier coats of Dingotone Beta on body and headstock face
- Colortone vintage amber mix stain on neck
- Two coats of Dingotone Mk.1 clear neck stain 'base' on neck
- The beta orange really stains binding, and I mean really. Much scraping of binding! But I love the colour
- First beta top coat on body
And that's where this build diary paused, briefly (about 2 years and 4 months ago)… and Wokka's nagging started.
The build didn't actually stop at that point, I was still applying the finish, I just didn't get around to an update before the build did pause. To finish the initial catch-up, here's the rest of the finishing I did two years ago.
The beta orange was proving to be very volatile even after plenty of drying time. It seemed to re-activate when applying my top coats and quickly stained my cloth.
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First coat of early Mk.1 neck top coat applied.
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The beta top coats were looking good, but patchy.
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You can see the binding was taking on colour again from applying the clear top coat.
Third top coat dry, looking good and the patchiness is slowly improving.
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Binding scraped, yet again, ready for 4th top coat.
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Fourth neck top coat.
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Fourth top coat on body.
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It was going on well and looking pretty good. But, then we had a couple of days of higher humidity and the finish took a turn. Coat #4 went from smooth and nice to coarse, rough and lumpy over a couple of days.
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(second image is without flash to get the contrast to show how rough it was)
I couldn't risk wet sanding with water to clean up the roughness, not enough protection for the wood. And, with the volatility of the orange I couldn't risk using a solvent to sand, so I had to go with dry 1200 wet'n'dry. I just wanted to smooth out the finish without taking off any more of the top coat (or orange) than necessary… but the paper was still stained very orange. With time and caution it was eventually smooth again.
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But it meant more orange moving around with the next top coat.
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Fifth top coat, or replacement of #4 really. Back to a nice smooth finish.
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Neck was still doing ok.
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Although the body was mostly smooth again with the 5th top coat, the patchiness was still occurring. Hard to photograph clearly, so I took some shots without the flash. You can just see the patchy/streaky sections scattered across the body, and it was pretty much the same on the headstock face.
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And, that's where I had to put the build aside two years ago. I was planning to let it dry for an extended period to see if that would improve the patchiness, but then life got in the way and it kept getting pushed aside (while also gathering a layer of dust).
*** time passes ***
Twenty-six months later…
While working on my YB-4 build I had a look at the TL-1TB's neck, and sighting down it something didn't look right. I was worried that it may have warped a bit while it had been hanging, but it looked more like a couple of frets may have just lifted slightly from all the temp and humidity changes over the long years of neglect. It was time it had some attention.
I re-pressed the frets to sort out any raised ones and gave it a light level to get it back where it should be. Black marker is a high spot, red everywhere else.
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Re-crowned, cleaned-up and polished.
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The binding was still stained from the last top coat application two years ago, so to start fresh I scraped the binding yet again (probably for the 7th time, or more, time).
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I wanted to continue with Dingotone on the build, but the beta top coat had turned to sludge long ago. The Mk.1 neck top coat, however, amazingly still looked ok after two years. A bit thicker perhaps but possibly still usable. I gave it a test on some scrap and it seemed good so I decided to risk it on both the neck and the body.
The binding had already been scraped so many times I didn't think it (or me) could handle another heavy scraping. So, I went with tape on the side of the binding hoping that I'd just have to clean up the top edge if at all.
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The neck top coat went on thicker than I hoped, but looked pretty good and was surprisingly nice and smooth. I was amazed it still seemed ok after so much time.
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I checked it after 7 days drying and it was looking smooth and surprisingly glossy. I was well pleased. There had been some increased humidity the previous few days so I checked it again on day 8 and it had changed completely. In 24hrs it had gone from looking nice and smooth to an absolute train wreck… it looked like someone had taken a fresh piece of 120 grit and sloughed off huge swathes of the finish.
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It was like the surface tension had broken and the finish had just fallen away. There was a little orange on the edge of the binding but no drips, drops, or runs, it was strange. The finish had gone from being smooth and glossy to a tacky, rough, patchy mess. My own fault for using the old finish.
More to come.
looking good Weirdy, so looks like you are on the home stretch !
Sadly Wokks, things were a bit pear-shaped as of my previous post.
Nice work!!
Interesting sequence of events. Any thoughts on what you'll do? it doesn't look like the finish is ever going to settle down.
It looks like people have used Tru-Oil over DT before. Is it worth trying that over the DT to try and seal it?
Yeah interesting is one way to describe it. Stay tuned Simon, further updates to follow.
After the debacle of the last top coat I left it to dry for another three weeks in the hopes the finish would lose some its tackiness and harden, at least a little. Sadly, neither occurred and it was pretty much just as sticky and nasty as it was on day 8. I love the orange colour and the way it has worked on the grain, so I was determined to try to save the finish if at all possible.
The stickiness of the finish meant the only option was wet sanding, but I couldn't use water as the wood wasn't really sealed. That meant using a solvent to wet sand. I normally use White Spirits when sanding Tru Oil, but with the volatility of the orange I was worried it would either rub off/dissolve too much of the colour or spread it around and stain everything (including the binding). In the end I decided to try wet sanding with metho, as the most benign solvent I had, in the hope that it would minimise the impact on the colour while still lubricating the sanding. The finish, despite its problems, was still pretty thin so to preserve as much of it as possible I stuck with 1200 grit. It would make things slow but I hoped it would be worth it.
Even just using metho for the wet sanding still had the orange flying in all directions. It was basically sand an area with metho, mop it up, repeat. Slow and messy, with lots of orange.
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Eventually I was able to undo most of the fouled top coat damage and get things reasonably smooth. I had to scrape the binding again to get rid of some staining from the orang'ified metho, but only lightly. As much as I wanted to stick with Dingotone on the build, the orange colour was still just too mobile to risk another failed top coat. So, reluctantly, I decided to switch to Tru-Oil to seal it once and for all.
First coats of Tru-Oil.
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After the first couple of coats I took the tape off the binding, as the orange seemed to be stable for now. From then on I was going to apply Tru-Oil over the binding as well, it meant it would yellow it slightly but it seemed like the safest option.
After 8 coats of Tru-Oil on the body and headstock it was starting to look a bit glossy and was ready for its first metho (yes, I kept using metho) wet sanding.
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Fifth coat of TO on the neck.
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In the end I did around 14 full strength Tru-Oil coats on the body and headstock face and then a stack of 50/50 White Spirits mix coats. The neck got around 8 full strength and another 8 50/50 coats.
Even the Tru-Oil coats fought me on the body. For some reason there'd always be some muck or bits showing up when applying it. It never happened on the neck, despite using the same fabric and same Tru-Oil/mix, same time and application method. So, there was something about the body, maybe the cavities or the binding, that was causing it. It didn't matter if I did the body first or neck first but it always seemed to happen.
Left the body and neck for a couple of weeks to harden.
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I gave it all a very light final wet sand with White Spirits and then a bit of a polish. It was probably a little glossier before the sand and polish process, but it needed it to get rid of a few lumps etc.
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Polished, a touch of gloss.
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The fret board was dry and pale after two years of hanging. I wanted it to have the dark rich rosewood look so instead of using Dingowax I reverted to Dr. Ducks Ax Wax for this build.
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Two applications over two days. Yummy.
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Time to rough out a nut.
Slots marked and initially cut with a fine 0.010" saw.
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Rough down the shape with a file.
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Slots filed. The B looks wider because I used a V cut file for it and flat files for the G and e.
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Close enough for now, will finalise after set up.
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Shielding cavities.
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Seams soldered, cavities linked via wires and bridge ground wire added ready for the bridge post bushings. Testing continuity to ensure it's all linked and working.
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Normally I'd install the pickups and wiring later, but because of the tightness of the cavity etc. I decided to do it before the rest of the hardware.
Pickups in.
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Pickup leads connected to the control plate I wired earlier in the build. It's going to be a tight squeeze. You can also see that I've put some heat shrink on the arm of the jack so it can't short onto the shielding in the jack cavity.
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Word of advice: cover the body completely, like I have, if you are ever soldering near/on it like this as tiny solder flecks will splatter under heat and inevitably burn into your finish and/or plastics.
Tap test on the pickups… it's alive and appears to be all working. Considering how tightly everything is packed/squeezed/jammed into that cavity, that's a miracle.
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Headstock bling.
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Using my drill press to push in the bridge post bushings.
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Checking that I've got good continuity from the bushing through the ground wire to the plate/shielding.
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I didn't have a plastic seat for my curved neck plate but I wanted one for this to protect the basswood and Tru-Oil combo, so i made an un-edged one from a standard seat. It'll do.
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Neck on and alignment initially checked with a fishing line centreline.
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Hello Mr. Bigsby.
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The die is cast.
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I'm not sure on the dice knobs as yet. Apart from the cheese factor the binding now has a slight aged/yellowed look from the Tru-Oil so the knobs don't match as well as when the binding was white. I've got some standard chrome knobs and a chrome tip if they annoy me too much. Still need to do some tweaking and final set up, but here are some assembled pics for now. Very difficult to get photos that actually show the grain on the top.
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I only got it assembled yesterday so it's still bedding in. The sound from the Surf 90's is actually better than I expected, and the wiring works pretty well (if I may say so myself). If anything, I think I'd like a touch more bass cut from the TBX, but only a tiny amount. It thins the sound slightly without making it tinny or ice-picky (you notice it most with a bit of dirt on), but I think a hint more cut would make it more flexible. Early days.
I wasn't going to use a pickguard on this, but now I'm thinking I may make a small clear one just to protect the finish a bit, given that Tru-Oil isn't particularly robust. I think a clear mini pickguard would look ok. We'll see.
The build is still fighting me… I got up this morning to find the high e had mysteriously snapped overnight, right at the locking tuner and not leaving enough string to re-thread it. Change in temperature I guess. It was only the old kit supplied bundle of strings, so no great loss, but I replaced it with an old used e just in case it wasn't a flaw in the string.
I'll post some better pics once it's set up and finalised.
Love the Guitar, Hate the Knobs..... Sorry, just my opinion.....
Same here... Get rid of those horrible knobs and replace them with nice chrome knobs and you have a great guitar!
Ah, so Tru-Oil did come to the rescue! Looks really nice now. Worth all the effort you put in.
I'd probably have to agree about the knobs. There's no other gambling references on the guitar to play off (maybe if you'd covered it in green baize). A bit cheeky, but maybe get some Gretsch style ones to go with the pickups?
big clap and congrats for finishing the build Weirdy, looks great, do we get a sound demo ?
I think the dice control knobs are fine, Do what you think is cool. not what others think !
Looks awesome. No dice from me too.
great to see this done, who cares what knobs you use - your axe mate. Love teles with bigsby style trems, suits so well.
Just an epic build sequence - thanks for taking the time to document it as you have!!
Love the result; great work!!
Well done Weirdy, finally reached the finish line with this one and awesome result!
Bewdiful job there Weirdy
What a great thread. Many hassles...problesm solved and an awesome end result. :)
Thanks guys. For those interested, here's what it looks like with boring classic chrome knobs and switch tip.
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I actually liked the cheesiness of the dice, but the white was just too white and stark and was starting to bug me. So, for now at least, the chrome will stay on.