Thinline Tele (DTL-1SB)

[woodpecker]

Ok, I've encountered my first two problems.

The pickup cavity is too far from the neck for my replacement Gotoh bridge (6-7mm). It's several mm too far for even the stock bridge. I will need to sand it with a handheld drill with a sanding drum drill bit as I don't have any better tools. Am I at risk of ruining the maple veneer?

Another problem is that the neck pickup mounting ring I got from Amazon for a few dollars is too big for the pickup and the cavity. Will need to get a new one.

On the positive side the headstock turned out great, and the neck and the frets are much better than I expected for this price!

[Trevor Davies]

You are not losing it, it's straight even though the pictures on the site showed curved! I am really happy with that as I can use a standard straight control plate.

I've got all the parts and I'm mostly done with the neck except for the frets and the finish.

Should there be string ferrules included in the kit? I don't think my kit had any.

The PBG kits do not come with ferrules or string through the body drill holes. Some of the bridges will allow for both string through and top loading setups. I'm not sure what bridge you have. You may be able to drill string through holes if wanted.

P.S. just read post 11 about the Gotoh bridge. Is this bridge string through only?

[Trevor Davies]

Ok, I've encountered my first two problems.

The pickup cavity is too far from the neck for my replacement Gotoh bridge (6-7mm). It's several mm too far for even the stock bridge. I will need to sand it with a handheld drill with a sanding drum drill bit as I don't have any better tools. Am I at risk of ruining the maple veneer?

Another problem is that the neck pickup mounting ring I got from Amazon for a few dollars is too big for the pickup and the cavity. Will need to get a new one.

On the positive side the headstock turned out great, and the neck and the frets are much better than I expected for this price!

Can you show a picture of the bridge cavity issue? 6 mm seems a lot off!

As far as widening the bridge cavity - a lot of folks use a Dremel (or similar) rotary tool with drum sanders. The maple veneer should be fine - though take it easy! All of your sanding should be hidden by the bridge.

[woodpecker]

Here are pictures of the stock bridge and the Gotoh. Stock is the one with the traditional saddles.

https://imgur.com/a/23rj6zM

It could be fine but I think I would like to sand it at least a few mm to make sure I can get the high E to around 650mm. The high E saddle in the picture is already almost at the end of the screw. Poor intonation would drive me nuts afterwards.

[Trevor Davies]

Here are pictures of the stock bridge and the Gotoh. Stock is the one with the traditional saddles.

https://imgur.com/a/23rj6zM

It could be fine but I think I would like to sand it at least a few mm to make sure I can get the high E to around 650mm. The high E saddle in the picture is already almost at the end of the screw. Poor intonation would drive me nuts afterwards.

Yes, I agree that the Gotoh bridge needs to come forward a bit. A bit of sanding in the route should make it work. It is hard to see in the picture, but there looks to be heaps of room for increasing the string length when intonating.

[woodpecker]

All right, took me several hours and a trip to Bunnings but I got there in the end. All saddles at ~650mm with room to adjust and the alignment seems ok.

https://imgur.com/a/7eZrATR

Thanks for your help. Next I need to do the frets, some stressful drilling of the body and start messing with tru-oil.

[fender3x]

You are not losing it, it's straight even though the pictures on the site showed curved! I am really happy with that as I can use a standard straight control plate.

I've got all the parts and I'm mostly done with the neck except for the frets and the finish.

Should there be string ferrules included in the kit? I don't think my kit had any.

I haven't built this kit and there are no pics of hardware that I can find for the kit. You may want to check the bridge. It may be a top loading bridge, or a hybrid that will allow either top loading or string-through. There's a bit of a debate top-loaders vs string through. Here's something about that if you are interested:



I have a hard tailed Strat that is a top loader. When a friend who is an avid Tele player heard I was building a Tele, eh lent me a couple of his Teles--both string through--for comparison. I liked the feel of my Strat enough better that I decided to do the Tele as a top loader. It didn't hurt to learn that the year I was born, Fender was issuing top loading Teles as SOP--although most, historically have been sting-through.

If you want to do string through, it might be worth shooting Tim an email. He had some extra parts at one point and might be able to hook you up if he still has them.

https://www.buildyourownguitar.com.a...ad.php?t=12620

Also, speaking of losing it... When I saw missing "ferrules" my brain glitched and went straight to "string trees"...which sent me to an image search. I think I had that on the brain because I just got a three-string tree for my Tele build. I got mine from Music City Bridge (the one on the left). My buddy has one of the other kind (on the right), which I saw at Solo Guitars in Canada.



Apropos of nothing...just figured since I had the image on my computer, I'd include it in case you get the deadly G-string-jump with just one string tree ;-)