#3:TL - 1 Custom

After jumping in and ordering the Tl1 Custom order that went wrong last month, finally get a chance to unbox and have a look. Was a birthday present so only got hold of it on Tuesday.

plans for the moment are something like,
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Mocking it up, the body is really clean no dings or marks that I can see at the moment,
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Only concern is the neck pocket. haven't done a bolt on kit before but it does seem a bit lose, going to be a gap that needs filled. Normal?
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This will be a slow one, got the Srat on the go which will be a bit of a test bed for my painting skills before I tackle this one, also plan on a lot of fender hardware which I will be buying piece by piece.

I used some copper shielding tape to tighten the neck pocket on the Strat build, worked a treat

interesting, you have to build up layers, or did one do it for you? Sounds like some experimenting will be required.

Visually, the pickguard should hide any gap - unless the pickguard and the end of the neck don't have the same shape.

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Originally Posted by Rossc0

interesting, you have to build up layers, or did one do it for you? Sounds like some experimenting will be required.

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A couple of layers on each side gave a very firm fit, a case of add as required

So any hints about basswood, as its mentioned a few places that its quite soft. Will it take an orbital sander, or am i resigned to do it all by hand?

Hey Rossco, no drama use an orbital but be careful to keep it flat and run with the grain. I usually get machine marks from bottom edge with 120 grit, then go over with 180 and 240 grit, then do the rest by hand to about 320 grit

Cheers, sigh of relief...

But basswood is soft and will mark easily, so be very careful not to put your nicely sanded body down on a nut, screw or screwdriver etc. or you'll end up with a dent that you'll either need to steam out or sand out. So make sure that the work area is clear of all extraneous items and have a soft towel or blanket to rest the body on.

OK, after a bit of a delay finishing the Strat and moving my daughter to the UK :-( back to the tele. Got it all sanded to 320, about to hit it with the ebony timbermate to try and bring out the little grain there is. But before I do that wondering if anyone has any reasonably fool proof method of creating a constant(ish) radius rolled edge without a router?

I had a similar gap in the neck pocket on my TL1 build, pick guard covered it fine. You probably want to enlarge the bridge pickup route so the bridge will sit in closer to the pickguard. Check the link in my signature to see what I did, went for a similar look to your plans. To do the edge bevel you can make a template to check and adjust it or make a radiused sanding block. I've used a small cornice off cut for that before.

Cheers. The unfortunate thing is with the small neck route I wasn't going to use a pickguard just a chrome pickup surround. Re the rolled edge I'll have a look at making something or try and make friends with someone with a routing table.

Geez, this supposedly simple TL1 build is going to cause me a few more issues than I was planning on.

Bought a stewmac 4 way switching set, a Wilkinson bridge and a set of tonerider pickups.

The control cavity route is to narrow for the stewmac pots, the bridge might be too short to cover the bridge pickup route when lined up with the string through holes, and the bridge pickup route itself is too small to take the baseplate on the tonerider pickup!

Bugger, oh well break out the dremmel.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rossc0

Cheers. The unfortunate thing is with the small neck route I wasn't going to use a pickguard just a chrome pickup surround. Re the rolled edge I'll have a look at making something or try and make friends with someone with a routing table.

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Yeah that's annoying. The neck pick up route is pretty big too, finding a nice surround that will work might be tricky.

At least its bass wood, its easy to work with. This is part of the fun really, there is a lot of work that goes into getting a nice guitar out of a kit that isn't instantly obvious.

Because you are painting you will get away with a lot of changing things around. Just take your time prepping up the fills and repairs and it'll look great.

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Originally Posted by Sonic Mountain

Yeah that's annoying. The neck pick up route is pretty big too, finding a nice surround that will work might be tricky.

At least its bass wood, its easy to work with. This is part of the fun really, there is a lot of work that goes into getting a nice guitar out of a kit that isn't instantly obvious.

Because you are painting you will get away with a lot of changing things around. Just take your time prepping up the fills and repairs and it'll look great.

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This was a custom order, the the neck pickup route is the right size for the single coil not the standard humberker size route, so that is one thing thats ok :-). Thats pictured in the link below.

http://www.buildyourownguitar.com.au...7&d=1502498730

Well this one if fighting me all the way. Pain in the arse, its nearly gone over the fence into the bush twice......

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rossc0

Geez, this supposedly simple TL1 build is going to cause me a few more issues than I was planning on.

Bought a stewmac 4 way switching set, a Wilkinson bridge and a set of tonerider pickups.

The control cavity route is to narrow for the stewmac pots, the bridge might be too short to cover the bridge pickup route when lined up with the string through holes, and the bridge pickup route itself is too small to take the baseplate on the tonerider pickup!

Bugger, oh well break out the dremmel.

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Sounds very similar to the mods I had to do on my TLA-1R, I had to enlarge the bridge pup rout and the control cavity for the pots as well.

I wouldn't worry about the small gap in the neck pocket, its a bolt on and the pickguard will cover it, however DK's idea about the shielding tape was a great idea.

Patience is not a virtue of mine, Trying to assist the tru oil drying process. Probably wasting my time, but it feels like I am doing something :D

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We put fans on digital prints to help the solvent out gas quicker and I hang my guitars to dry with a fan circulating air around them. I think it makes a difference.

Yes, it should speed things up.

Well its coming along, the weather is playing nice, able to get a couple of coats of tru oil a day on, so far it has been 4 then a buff, 6, buff and the 8th is drying now.

Want to get it finished before I head back to work on the 8th, so maybe rest of today and tomorrow oiling and that will do it.

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Done with the tru-oil, probably a couple less coats than originally intended, but getting to the bottom of the bottle and its full of crystals, its been open a year so not sure of its shelf life.

Coppered the routes, now time to try and be patient and leave it alone for a while to let it fully cure before the final finish on the finish.

Pleased that you can't really notice the filling round the neck pocket too much

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Looking great. Blue just seems to work with a maple neck.

So fitted ferrules, bridge, pickups and all soldering, just got the nut to replace before stringing it up and giving it a final polish.

And yes I know the control plate is on in a reverse orientation when compared to a standard tele, this isn't a standard tele, its my tele :D

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Nice rossco

I like the reverse plate. Definitely gives it that 'custom' look

All looking very good.

Cheers guys.

I'm not sure about the control plate more I look at it, amy end up reversing it again. we'll see.

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Originally Posted by Rossc0;156919
And yes I know the control plate is on in a reverse orientation when compared to a standard tele,
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This is not an uncommon T style customisation, as you can move the volume control closer to the picking hand. Fender has even had artist models with it oriented this way.

The control plate looks fine. A standard Nashville adjustment. If you'd fitted a scratchplate, you wouldn't notice it at all.

There you go, learn something everyday. Cheers folks. I did move the volume to the neck side. Oh well I'll leave it see how we go.

All buttoned up and working. A bit of a hum that disappears as soon as I touch anything metallic, a dodgy earth somewhere probably. So, sometime, not now, I'm a little bit over this one right at present and I've got the ES12G calling me, I'll rip it down and track down the cause.

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Looks great man

Cheers, pretty happy with the final look.

Some hum is normally unavoidable with single coils. Grounding yourself well via the strings either a) grounds your body so that it absorbs a lot of the RF noise in the air near the guitar or b) stops your body acting as an aerial and feeding noise to the pickups (or a mixture of both - different people have different opinions).

Have you grounded your copper tape at all? Unless it's connected to ground, it's not going to do much to cut down hum. And some hum from amps is magnetic in nature (mainly the transformers), which tape won't do much to reduce. All you can do is distance yourself from the amp and turn to find the least noisy position. I've got one amp (a Laney Ironheart) which gives out a lot more hum than my other amps, even comes through a bit on humbuckers.

Hi Simon, I was thinking I hadn't grounded the tape, so thats on my to do list. Cheers.

Nice work Rossco

Much happier. "working from home today" got to love it. Stripped the electrics out, unsoldered everthing, double checked the wiring diagram and started again, including a ground to the shielding this time.

Far better, nice and quite, 4 distinct tones from the switch, we are almost there with this one now, just got to find out why my B string sounds a bit dead compaired to everything else when played open, fretted it sounds fine.

Probably the nut slot or slot angle.

Finished Finished this time, solved the dead B string issue. I took the bone nut out and replaced it with an allparts graphite one I had in my ever growing box of bits, all good. So as Simon mentioned there was something wrong with the nut slot. Thanks Simon.

Intonation is also done, as close as I can get it. With the wilkinson bridge, to get it to line up with the "through body" holes and be able to get the scale length right I had to find some longer saddle screws to allow them to move forward far enough.

I'll wait till the sun shines get some outside pics show of the shine for the GOTM thread.

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Introducing it to the rest of the PB family.

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