Madmorrie's TL-1 build

[Madmorrie]

Hi All,

I have wanted to learn to play for a while. i bought a cheap strat copy years ago but it's intonation was off and I never really got into the practicing to learn properly, then one of my kids 'borrowed' it and that was that.

So now, for whatever reason I have decided I need a guitar to match my car. And I figure if I hang it over my desk it will
A) look cool, and
B) there's a slight chance I might actually pick it up to practice occasionally, and you know, actually learn top play it...

Anyway, that's the hard part for later on. First is the fun part of building it.

I've build a fair few cars to how hard could this be?

You've all seen the raw kit, didn't take photos of that.
So we pick up here after I have shaped the head (to match the badge I designed for my car), and got a half decent coat of satin clear on the head and neck.




Damn paint run!




Then I have done some shaping to the body which came up pretty well I think. Bit of fairing some of the curves here and there, plus a stat style cut out on the back and taper on the front. Then I gave the whole thing a few coats of high-fill 2 pack, with a brush, but this is all getting sanded soon anyway.







Now becuase I can't leave anything standard, and I just don't like the look of the tele pick guard, I had decided I was going to ditch it. Then I discovered thats how the neck pickup mounted. I did see some guitars have them mounted to the body, but that still leaves a big hole.



So I've drawn up and 3d printed this infill bit, which drops into the hole nicely and mounts the pickup as it was intended.







So there you go, thats about where I am up to. Trying to figure out how to fill the gaps between the neck then I'm looking forward to sanding and painting the body.

Oh yeah, it's gonna be yellow to match this.



Cheers
Madmorrie

[fender3x]

Welcome MM! There are a couple of other car guys on the forum. I am not so much a car guy, but do favor a guitar aesthetic that is consistent with the SoCal hotrod culture of the 50's and 60's when Leo Fender was teaching us what guitars were supposed to look like. More power to you (pun intended).

There is something very special about playing an instrument you've built. That and healthy helpings of YouTube should be a good motivator.

I'd really like to see you pics. I see that you tried to put pics in, but they the system seems to have dropped them. I tried to link directly to them on counterfit dot net dot au, but it gave me a "This site can't be reached" message."

This system will allow you to upload your pics directly, but you may need to reduce the size of the images. No side of the rectangular image can exceed 1500 pixels. I think it also limits you to 3-4 pics per post. When I have more, I usually just break it into multiple posts.

Please do re-post the pics. I am particularly interested in this...

Hi All,
...Now becuase I can't leave anything standard, and I just don't like the look of the tele pick guard, I had decided I was going to ditch it. Then I discovered thats how the neck pickup mounted. I did see some guitars have them mounted to the body, but that still leaves a big hole.

So I've drawn up and 3d printed this infill bit, which drops into the hole nicely and mounts the pickup as it was intended.

Most folks who ditch the pickguard end up using a pickup ring like this:



I have never seen someone fill in the space. I'd really like to see that!

Also I want to see the "this" that is the reason that your guitar will be yellow!

[fender3x]

Somehow the pics magically appeared. I guess big brother decided I was allowed to see those images after all!

The headstock is great, particularly with the explanation of where it comes from. That's a bit more aggressive take on the ox-fording-the-river than I have seen before...and fits well with a hot-rodded Mini.



The pickup "box" is really innovative. I haven't seen something like that before. It fits well, also provides you with options if you ever decided to change out the tele pickup for something else. Do you plan to paint the box as well? Or leave it as a black highlight?