BlackBerry tele build diary TLA1s

I’m new to the forum and pitbull but a little experienced with guitar building in general having built myself a partscaster, a scratch bass and tele previously.
I bought the necks in because that’s beyond my skil level atm.
My wife bought me a pitbull kit for Xmas, I asked her to get me anything off the site and keep it a surprise as I’ve been really impressed with what I’ve seen from pitbull previously.
I’m starting this build diary a little late because I hadn’t realised that there was such an active forum on here but I’ll try and get caught up with the photos and steps I’ve taken so far at some point today.
I didn’t buy it myself so I think it’s a TLA1s but mine doesn’t have binding.

Welcome mate. Looking forward to seeing your build 👍🏻

Yaaaaay, any tele kit is awesome. :cool:

https://i.imgur.com/tVG7r20.jpg
Hopefully this photo works, this is the body after some light additional sanding.

Started laying many, many thin layers of dartfords wood dye until it built up to the colour I wanted.
https://i.imgur.com/jZdyOm0.jpg

Btw I’m not sure if these photos are showing up for anybody so let me know if I’m doing something wrong, couldn’t upload directly from my phone.
Once the dye was finished I started with multiple coats of Tru-oil but made a huge mistake (which I neglected to take a photo of) when I applied too much at once and got runs of oil over the back of the body.
Had to sand the entire back of the body down to bare wood and start again.
This is partway through the sanding.
Thankfully I rescued it.
https://i.imgur.com/Bvd4u5B.jpg

Oh my, I can see this one is going to be off the hook, I love the spalt through that colour, will you continue adding more colour or are you done?

https://i.imgur.com/1auVaq9.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/7ZuNxln.jpg
This is after a few coats of Tru Oil.

Thanks, appreciate the feedback.
That’s the colour done for now, I wanted to get it nice and deep without overpowering that spalt.

Oh dear sweet mother of god look at how that's coming up! that is magnificent. Great job so far man!

Well it’s neck day today, I’m aiming (optimistically) to grain fill with a very subtle amount of purple, nowhere near as deep as the body, sand it back and then start oiling the neck. The headstock shape was cut yesterday, it’s a standard T shape with just a tiny amount of additional contouring.
Hopefully more photo’s later.

https://imgur.com/a/7EoNS35
Dyed and shaped neck

That's looking great. Very striking spalt, and you've brought out the quilt in it really nicely too. Looking forward to seeing it come together.

Sent from my SM-G955F using Tapatalk

If using Windows, right click on the photo on the Imgur page, select 'copy image location' and use that as the URL of the photo . At the moment you are just linking to the web page the image is on, not the image itself. If the address hasn't got .jpg or .png in it, that's not the image. so won't show up in image brackets.

e.g.
https://i.imgur.com/tVG7r20.jpg

That's definitely an Ash body with a spalted maple veneer:cool:

https://i.imgur.com/1auVaq9.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/7ZuNxln.jpg

Looking great, you need to put the image code before and after the link. If you reply with quote to this comment you’ll see what I mean with ‘img’ and ‘/img’ before and after in square brackets.

Really nice job can't wait to see it finished!

https://i.imgur.com/3ssoDMs.jpg
Thanks for the kind comments and advice guys.
If I’ve done this correctly this should show the neck heel sanded down with the “dirty grain filled” effect I’ve been trying to achieve.
I a few coats of Tru Oil on tonight but I’m going for a thinner overall coating that the body.
A few days drying time now because I have to work but I’ll be hopefully posting some more photos on Sunday.

That's a FANTASTIC bit of veneer on that one, look at how the figure is coming out around the spalt, and the way that the differently affected areas between the spalt have coloured up. Its absolutely magnificent!

It’s the first time I’ve seen a darker colour stained over the top of a spalt veneer. I understand why people often want to keep it natural, but this looks really good. I like the way the stain has been taken up differently in the different sections.

https://i.imgur.com/84jpGr7.jpg
Headstock logo in place. I’m planning on keeping the neck quite thinly coated with Tru Oil.
Another 24 hours and I’ll give her a slight buffing with some very fine wet and dry on the back of the neck.
The next step is taking a P90 pickup cover and adapting it so that I can use it as a method of holding the lipstick pickup in place.
I really want a lipstick sound in the neck position of this guitar but I really can’t bring myself to cover this beautiful grain with a pickguard, it would be an absolute travesty .

A P90 cover was used by Gibson to mount mini-humbuckers in a P-90 rout, so it's been done before. But whether a P90 cover will fit depend on the size of that humbucker rout. A P90 is a little bit longer and a little bit narrower than a normal humbucker.

I've seen double lipsticks configured like a humbucker (StewMac do a GoldenAge one), so you might consider fixing two together and having a coil tap, so that you could get a humbucking and single coil lipstick sound and fit a standard humbucker ring for mounting (if you did this you'd need a normal and a RWRP one to create a hum cancelling pickup.

Thanks Simon, the rout in this body is actually a p90 sized one anyway so there’s very little work for me to do, I also have a spare p90 cover left over from my last build.
I’m planning on using the lipstick pickup that came with the kit initially as I’ve never owned a guitar with one in, i’ll have very little to compare it to in terms of sound quality. If I don’t get on with it then it can always be upgraded later but at the very least it looks really cool.
My problem is finding the correct tools to cut the correct size for the pickup in the plastic cover I have.
I think I may have to do it by hand with a set of modelling files I have, wish I had the cash to invest in a dremel to make life easier.

https://i.imgur.com/RSzoQnT.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/aiNx2JM.jpg
More hardware attached for setup and soldering today.
Hopefully I’ll get it finished tomorrow.
If anyone is reading could you give me some honest feedback on whether it would be worth entering into the guitar of the month competition?
I’ve decided to keep it almost stock so not sure if it will have enough interest.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Coganite

https://i.imgur.com/aiNx2JM.jpg
More hardware attached for setup and soldering today.
Hopefully I’ll get it finished tomorrow.
If anyone is reading could you give me some honest feedback on whether it would be worth entering into the guitar of the month competition?
I’ve decided to keep it almost stock so not sure if it will have enough interest.

---

Coganite, it’s definitely worth it for the feedback, and honestly, this is a fantastic build that should do well. On the down side there are already a couple of stunners in the mix.

Enter it Coganite, make the judges life difficult. It is worthy.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FrankenWashie

Coganite, it’s definitely worth it for the feedback, and honestly, this is a fantastic build that should do well. On the down side there are already a couple of stunners in the mix.

---

Every month the standard goes up so no point in putting it off

Hopefully this multi photo post works but if not I’ll have to add them all individually.
She’s complete (just waiting for coloured strings).
https://imgur.com/gallery/cC8CqwX

https://i.imgur.com/M5J5Bpm.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/4RwioYa.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/rJ5Lko6.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/6D0jVDP.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/TL7Y0RT.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/zGxocMj.jpg

Looks fantastic! That maple top really shines, literally and figuratively. Love the black hardware, keeps it minimalist and classy.

Sent from my SM-G955F using Tapatalk

What a beauty!