TL-1 first kit build

Hello all,

I’ve been playing electric guitar for about 2 years now and finally decided to put a kit together. My teacher at school (yes I’m still at school so limited time for me to work on it, yay) says he did one and it sounded great. This is probably what pushed me to doing it as it’s something I’ve always wanted to do.

I received a Telecaster kit for my birthday last week and am so excited to build it. My plan, like many others, is to document it here. Any bits of help or if you notice anything, please let me know.

Here is a mockup of my guitar, looking really nice so far and I have no complaints with anything other than a few marks of the control panel (which I’ll just get some Brasso out). I plan to paint the body white.


Attachment 30963



Dylan

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Diggydude

Hello all,

I’ve been playing electric guitar for about 2 years now and finally decided to put a kit together. My teacher at school (yes I’m still at school so limited time for me to work on it, yay) says he did one and it sounded great. This is probably what pushed me to doing it as it’s something I’ve always wanted to do.

I received a Telecaster kit for my birthday last week and am so excited to build it. My plan, like many others, is to document it here. Any bits of help or if you notice anything, please let me know.

Here is a mockup of my guitar, looking really nice so far and I have no complaints with anything other than a few marks of the control panel (which I’ll just get some Brasso out). I plan to paint the body white.


Attachment 30963



Dylan

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Welcome to the group Dylan,

I’m also putting together a Tele kit. This group has so many knowledgeable people so you’ll be fine,
Looking forward to your build mate.


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Welcome Dylan

Welcome aboard Dylan, and good luck with the build!

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Hiya Dylan,

Welcome, and good luck with the build. Plenty of helpful people here if you need a hand.

rob

Hi Dylan, we run a club at the school I work at and do these with the students. They come out really well, hope you continue to enjoy your build

Looks like it'll be a nice guitar, agree with the others TL kits are great fun and satisfying to build. Just go easy with the brasso as the electroplating isn't very thick on some of the kit items. Should be fine if you go slow and gentle.

As it was the last day of the school holidays, I worked on the guitar for a while. First off I installed the bridge by getting it centred and at the end of the scale length. After doing this, it was screwed in.

Moving up the neck, I replaced the plastic nut with the bone one I got. This didn’t go so well. When I pulled the plastic nut out, a tiny piece of wood from the headstock side came out with it. Luckily I had some wood glue nearby so I put a bit on and set it in a clamp for a bit.

Next up I drilled holes to install the Grover machine heads I ordered. This went well (thankfully). The only tricky bit was that the low E string tuner wouldn’t sit flat on the headstock as it was on the bottom of the slope from the fretboard. I fixed this with a bit of sanding and now I’m happy with it. To find out where to drill the pilot holes, I put the tuners in and using a ruler lined them up. This gave me exactly where I needed to screw.

Once these were in, I clamped the neck into the body to check the spacing of the two E strings. Both were parallel to the neck and had decent action, about what I’m used to (I believe that this will change once it is all put together though). While it was clamped, I drilled the holes to mount the neck onto the body. All of the pilot holes I drilled I used masking tape on the drill bit so I don’t go to far.

The final bit I did today was start thinking about the headstock shape. I haven’t done any cutting yet as I want to give it a bit of thought. I am considering a telecaster style shape (wow imagine that, a tele shape on a tele kit) but I drew it on free hand. This gave me a slightly different, slightly stratocaster style shape.

Unfortunately the forum doesn’t like any of the pictures I took so no pictures today. I’ll try to fix that but I probably won’t get to do much work on it until the weekend. I’m in year 11 so no easing into work in a new term.

Until next time,
Dylan

Good on ya Dylan, looks like you have had a productive day.


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Welcome aboard Dylan, if you need any help just sing out, if you do strike and issues, just post photos and one of the gang can lend assistance.

Enjoy!

You can try using Imgur to post images, I wrote up a rough guide a little while ago

https://www.buildyourownguitar.com.a...ead.php?t=8108

As Frankie said if you have any probs, just ask.

Welcome Dylan, with pictures, i find they have to be compressed below 200kb otherwise it won't work. Looking forward to seeing some pics

I use irfanview ( free software ) and resize the longest side to 1500 and save.

Job jobbed

Hello again everyone. Fortunately I haven’t had any problems but I’m glad to hear I can get help here. Today I didn’t do very much but I’m very satisfied with what I have done.

Today I finalised the headstock shape and cut it out with help from my dad. I haven’t used a scroll saw very often and I’ve only ever cut plywood (which happens to be a lot thinner than the headstock) and softer mdf. I decided to go with my first idea but I moved the curve a bit lower down, leaving more wood and allowing me to amplify the curves.

Here’s the result
Attachment 31009
Attachment 31010

I’m very happy with it and after the initial cutting, the filing went well. I’ll do some sanding a bit later on, just before I paint and coat it.

Speaking of painting, where can I get the correct paint and clear coat here in Perth (preferably north of the river)? I believe I can’t just go to Bunnings, grab some paint and go - or is this something I can do?

Dylan

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Diggydude

Hello again everyone. Fortunately I haven’t had any problems but I’m glad to hear I can get help here. Today I didn’t do very much but I’m very satisfied with what I have done.

Today I finalised the headstock shape and cut it out with help from my dad. I haven’t used a scroll saw very often and I’ve only ever cut plywood (which happens to be a lot thinner than the headstock) and softer mdf. I decided to go with my first idea but I moved the curve a bit lower down, leaving more wood and allowing me to amplify the curves.

Here’s the result
Attachment 31009
Attachment 31010

I’m very happy with it and after the initial cutting, the filing went well. I’ll do some sanding a bit later on, just before I paint and coat it.

Speaking of painting, where can I get the correct paint and clear coat here in Perth (preferably north of the river)? I believe I can’t just go to Bunnings, grab some paint and go - or is this something I can do?

Dylan

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You’ve done a good job there mate, looking good.


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Welcome Dylan, you are doing a great job. You are thinking about the process and not just barging in. A Tele is an excellent first choice. looking forward to the results

Hello again everyone,

Today I was off from school because of an orthadontist appointment (2 actually) so I worked on my kit.

I taped up the fretboard and levelled the frets. This went quickly and smoothly. Using the crowning file I bought with the kit, I rounded the frets again. Unfortunately I didn’t have fine enough steel wool or sand paper to polish them so I’ve kept the tape on.

I did a bit of sanding on the body, but I didn’t do too much as I can’t paint without paint.

Where can I get the correct paint? Is there a certain type?

On a similar point, do I need the neck oil kit or could I just use the clear coat on the neck? What do I do with the fretboard?

Until next time,
Dylan

Well done Dylan on the fret board, I screwed mine up.

Paint wise I’ve been told any auto shop as long as it’s the same type of paint from primer to clear coat.

I have used colour spec from SCA. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...fbb8eb6ae2.jpg


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Hi Dylan, if you want a typical Fenderish lacquered fretboard just use the same finish all over the neck......clear acrylic spray or maybe something with a slight amber tint, or maybe Tru Oil. Never used Tung Oil but believe it can also do a good job. For a more satin finish there are furniture polishing waxes that you could use. Ozzbike has used Gillys......https://gillyswaxesandpolishes.com.a...makers-wax-cmw and it looks great.
Attachment 31103

Cheers, Waz

Hello again,

Today my dad and I went around to get some paint and necessary sandpaper. Just like I’ll Give it a Go suggested, we went to the Joondalup Super Cheap looking specifically for the Colour Spec paint, but they didn’t have all 3 parts (They only had primer. Eventually we ended up at the Balcatta one where we decided to take the pictured paints.

Attachment 31157

We confirmed with the staff that the paints were compatible and were the same but we are going to do a test tomorrow anyway.

Attachment 31156

We also picked up come polish and cutting compound as the manual suggests.

Tomorrow I may put a coat onto the body but I can only do proper work on the weekend so see all of you next week.
Dylan

Today, after a quick test and drilling all the necessary holes, I started to paint the body.

Due to schoolwork and other duties, I didn’t get to do much. In fact I’ve only done the first coat of primer which I’m going to sand off to find any hollow spots.

Attachment 31163

One problem I’ve discovered is the pickguard doesn’t line up completely. If I line it up with the neck, there’s a big gap on the other side. If I line the control panel up, there’s a gap around the neck. Is this a common thing? Is it supposed to be like this? At the moment I’m going to leave it and see if it’s noticable once the body is the same colour.

Dylan

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Diggydude

One problem I’ve discovered is the pickguard doesn’t line up completely. If I line it up with the neck, there’s a big gap on the other side.
Dylan

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Yes. The pick-up route is a centimeter further south than a standard Fender Telecaster.
This is why the standard telecaster pick-guard has the extra gap.
On mine the fretboard was 5mm shorter at the high end which also exacerbates the issue.
https://www.buildyourownguitar.com.a...King%27s+TL-1R

I had already drilled the string-through holes so re-locating the bridge was out of the question.
I had to cut a custom scratch plate to cover the extra territory.
Since I decided on a different finish, I also re-routed some of the control cavity further back
to compensate for it's forward position.

cheers, Mark.

It's also worth noting that the kit bridge is closer in design to the Squier.
The squier bridge has an extra centimeter at the tail end so you could compensate somewhat by measuring scale length with the high 'E' forwards towards the end of it's travel.

cheers Mark.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by king casey

Yes. The pick-up route is a centimeter further south than a standard Fender Telecaster.
This is why the standard telecaster pick-guard has the extra gap.
On mine the fretboard was 5mm shorter at the high end which also exacerbates the issue.
https://www.buildyourownguitar.com.a...King%27s+TL-1R

I had already drilled the string-through holes so re-locating the bridge was out of the question.
I had to cut a custom scratch plate to cover the extra territory.
Since I decided on a different finish, I also re-routed some of the control cavity further back
to compensate for it's forward position.

cheers, Mark.

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Ahh ok.

I reckon I’ll have to cut one but I’m not going to do that now, I’ll just arrange it the best possible and leave it. When I do this I’ll probably cut space for a humbucker because I didn’t know there a rout big enough for it so I didn’t get one to begin with.

Hello,

Over the weekend I’ve been doing some painting. Lots of painting.

I sprayed in the primer and lost track of the coats. All I know is that I used the entire can. Same thing with the base coat. It went fairly well, there was minimal running.

Attachment 31220 Attachment 31221

As you can see I developed a bit of a reflection which will become better next weekend when I spray the clear coat.

All in all, a productive weekend.

Dylan

Nice one Dylan, you’ve done well mate.


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Hello again,

Thanks to the long weekend, I finished my first build!

Attachment 31282

It came together nicely and once I’m done typing this I’m going to start doing all the fine tuning (although it plays nicely already). I showed it off at school and it had a great reception.

This won’t be the last of my, I plan to make atleast one more and I want to make one for an art project at school.

Thanks for all the help,
Dylan

They’re a bit like chips, it’s hard to stop at one. Well done, looks great!

Well done Dylan that looks awesome.


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