GlennGPs Tele #2 ("Tanias Red Menace")

[Tim]

Nice work Glenn

[GlennGP]

Thanks Tim. It's coming up pretty well, I'm very lucky to have the luxury of time with this one, and I'm appreciating it. The difference between "building" something and "crafting" something, I'd like to think!

[dingobass]

Great work Glenn

[GlennGP]

Now that the neck is sorted out it's time to get some Wudtone on it. We've gone for the original vintage yellow on the neck, so here we go!



I've got the fretboard masked off, because I like it to be the natural colour. When I do the last clear top coat I'll take the masking off, use some 0000 steel wool to remove any "ridge" along the tape line, and then include the fretboard in the final top coat. That was pretty much what I did with the Yellow Peril, and I've been very happy with the finish and the feel of the fretboard under my fingers.

[GlennGP]

Ooh, a question for 1800-DINGOBASS - I've made sure that the bone nut will fit the slot, but haven't fitted it yet, on the basis that I haven't been able to check the height of the action. I'm proposing to drop it into the slot when I set up the guitar for the first time and work it out then, and only when I'm happy with the height will I glue it in. It's a pretty tight fit, it would probably stay exactly where it is if I didn't glue it, now that I think about it.

Any thoughts on this approach? (anyone can weigh in, not just DB!)

[GlennGP]

Today I warmed up the soldering iron to upgrade the passive electronic components for the Red Menace. As explained on page 1, this is a guitar which may actually be taken on stage by its owner, so the upgrades are:

• CRL 3-way switch
  Alpha pots
  Sprague Orange Drop cap
  tone fidelity circuit

New components on the left, control panel with stock components on the right.

[GlennGP]

Earlier in this thread I had some trouble tracing the circuits on the 3-way. Today I got it worked out - well, I had to!

First things first - get the component on the panel and wire it to the pot. The screw holes for the stock part were smaller, so I had to bore them out a bit to accommodate the CRL component screws.



Here we have the solution to the circuit problem. Pretty sure I've seen this done elsewhere!

[GlennGP]

Lastly, getting the pots on the panel. Until you see them next to one another you don't realise how much more robust those Alpha pots are!

In order to preserve my sanity, I replaced them one at a time, taking careful note of what was attached where and then putting them straight back in the same places on the new component, while it was all still fresh in my memory.

In this pic I've changed the tone pot but not the volume. Orange drop installed! As with the switch, the holes in the panel for the stock parts were too small for the new ones, so I had to bore these out a bit too.



And here we are all finished up. Don't look too closely at the soldering, I'm a novice in that department, but they're solid and they work.

[stan]

great work Glenn, this one will rock!

[Gavin1393]

/<\\/p>[]<\\/p>/Quote from GlennGP on October 5, 2013, 13:35
Ooh, a question for 1800-DINGOBASS - I've made sure that the bone nut will fit the slot, but haven't fitted it yet, on the basis that I haven't been able to check the height of the action. I'm proposing to drop it into the slot when I set up the guitar for the first time and work it out then, and only when I'm happy with the height will I glue it in. It's a pretty tight fit, it would probably stay exactly where it is if I didn't glue it, now that I think about it.

Any thoughts on this approach? (anyone can weigh in, not just DB!)

Sounds fine to do it that way and set up once you are finished, but I would still glue it into place with some super glue at that time. It will come out of the slot again if you need to change it later.
These plastic one's are glued in with something weird which often causes damage to the fretboard, but a clean nut slot and a drop or two of superglue will do the trick. If you don't glue the nut in it might slip during the middle of your Van Halen solo and that would destroy your tuning!