TL-1HA first build

[Groovyman32]

Thanks for all the advice!

Ladies and Gents, I give you nut 1.0.



I'm quite pleased with how it's turned out. I think there's room to go lower but I didn't want to risk it. It doesn't quite have the same zing as the Graphtec but I'm going to live with it.

I used the Graphtech as a template for the rough shape and string spacing. I found that some of the files I have aren't as wide as they're supposed to be. I had to rock the file from side to side to get the string to sit in the bottom of the slot. I also found the files would stick in the slot... maybe the slots are too deep? I could have started with less height perhaps?

I also added the string tree from the kit for the B and E. I might replace this with something a bit classier as it's quite prominent - but it can wait until the next parts order.

I'm not sure there's much left to do now - I need to lower the pots as the knobs are sitting too high. I might also go back to the frets to file the ends a little more and repolish. Other then that it's final setup tweaks and then the glamour shots!

[Groovyman32]

I've sorted out the knobs - The reason they were sitting so high was because of the split to solid shaft collar converter things I'd got were too long. So a few minutes with a hacksaw showed them who's boss.

The sun came out for a few minutes so I thought I'd take the final shots of the guitar - at least for this thread:



Here's a run down of the spec as it stands:

Body:	Modified for string through. Finish: - Rustins natural grain filler mixed with black artist oil paint - Crimson "Stunning stains" - 52 coats of home brew wipe on poly (50% Rustins Polyurethane varnish, 50% white spirit) - Polished with Maznerna 1000, 2500 and 3500 polish
Neck:	Modified with black mother of pearl dot inlays. Finish: - Four coats of Tru-Oil - Home made water slide decals - Headstock face ~20 further coats of the Tru-Oil and polished.
Bridge:	Gotoh Hardtail strat bridge with steel saddles
Tuners:	Grover locking mini tuner upgrade from Pitbull
Scratch plate:	Home made single ply. Material from guitarbuild.co.uk
Nut:	Home made bone from a cheap blank from Amazon
Neck plate:	Kit
Jack plate:	Gotoh Square Jack Plate
Strap buttons:	Gotoh Fender Replacement Strap Buttons
Pickups:	Seymour Duncan Phat Cats
Switch:	Switchcraft short body
Pots:	CTS Mini 500k audio taper
Knobs:	Kulson Bakerlite witch hat
Neck and scratch plate screws:	Charles Guitars Stainless steel
String ferrules:	Gotoh TLB-1
String tree:	Kit

I'm really pleased with how it's turned out. I love how it looks, it intonates (just about), it's playable, it stays in tune and it sounds unlike anything else I have in my meagre line up.

There's loads of room for improvement so I don't think it will be the final iteration. My current plans include a nicer string tree, refine the scratch plate a little more, change the tone pots for linear taper (doh!) and keep replacing the nut as I get better at making them.

But the big ticket item is to refinish the body, learning from all the mistakes I made the first time around. The finish looks great from a distance but it does not stand up to close inspection. The main issue is that it's not hardened enough to stand up to the rigours of casual home playing let alone the occasional gig. DGMW, I would be totally proud to stand on stage with it but its going to get dinged up quite quickly (some might say all the better!). Of course I have to workout what to do differently next time - and that's probably going to be wait until it's warm. I might even try spraying with cans. I love the stain - so that will stay/get recreated.

Despite the problems with the finish it's way beyond what I thought would be achievable in my shed. I've done a number of music related home projects over the years but the one thing that put me off actually building a guitar was that I would end up with a finish that looks like a bad school GCSE project. But now I see that a good finish is totally achievable given enough time and patience.

The highlights that I'm most proud of are the stain, the string through body mod and the MOP inlays. I didn't think they would be within range with skills and tools I have but I very pleased with how those turned out.

As a first build the TL1-HA has been loads of fun and I have learnt so much. It was a bit of a punt - the original plan was to make it totally stock and to use it as a learning platform for the "main build". But I've since realised I don't think there will ever be a "main build". This is the start of a journey; there will always be a next one which will be better and more refined than the last.

My biggest criticism of TL1-HA is the location of the pots. With the kit knobs they're unusable for any player who uses the controls whilst playing. The gap is so small you can't wrap your little finger around them. The cavity is big enough (with mini sized pots) to spread them out to the 5cm x 4cm spacing on the Fender deluxe tele. This was the main reason I made a scratch plate. The sliver lining is I now have a trim router and the beginnings of a new skill and over all, (IMO) the single black ply looks way better than the 3-ply kit plate.

In hindsight, the kit I should have bought is the GTH-1 (but with a maple neck) as that's pretty much what I've built. But I don't think I'll buy a full kit again. The body and neck are good - but it's so wasteful just to bin the kit parts. If there was an option to order the kit without any hardware parts (even for the same price) I think I would choose that.

I think one of the best things about Pitbull is this forum. I've got so much help and valuable advice - I don't think I would have something even close to this good without all your help. This project has helped me out of some dark times and you have been a big part of that. So I want to say thank you so much to everyone who has helped in the last few months. Love you guys!

[Simon Barden]

The Tele looks great in the photos, well done!

There used to be ‘no hardware’ and ‘no pickups’ options for the kits and you could save £10 or so (so less VAT to pay on import as well). But that seemed to have stopped. One issue was that the control rout cover plates for rear-routed kits were in the hardware packs, so you ended up having to make your own if you didn’t want the hardware. That’s about the only kit parts I normally use.

What don’t you like about the tone pots? I use 250k audio pots for tone on humbuckers and single coils as I think almost nothing occurs on a 500k pot above halfway down. And audio pots to me give a more useable range over the pot’s travel.

The tone pot resistance simply limits the amount of mids and treble that are bled away to ground through the tone capacitor. Turn the tone pot right down and you hear the full effect of the capacitor. With the resistance of the tone pot limiting the signal being bled off, the main guitar tone is a proportion of the straight signal and the signal missing the mids and treble.

I plotted this a couple of days ago to see what effect putting a parallel resistor across the tone pot would have on its taper, as I wanted to convert a 500k pot on a concentric pot arangement to a 250k pot.



You can see the log curve (taken from measuring an Alpha 500k audio pot and scaled down to 250k to act as a comparison), and a theoretical linear taper (the start and finish points won’t be on 0 and 100). The two middle curves are the modified curves from putting a resistor in parallel with either the whole track or between the wiper and the connected end of the pot. Note that on the X axis, 0=tone fully up (set on 10) and 100 = tone knob fully down (set on 1 or 0 depending if you have Fender or Gibson knobs).

As the loss of treble depends on the pot resistance at any given position, you can see that whilst a linear pot looses resistance more quickly than an audio pot to start with, by the time the knob is at 8.5, the resistances are similar and from then on, the audio pot always has less resistance than the linear pot until they are both fully turned down.

To my (it must be said frequency damaged) ears, even a 250k audio pot does nothing noticeable until it’s down to 6 or below.

To me, a linear pot pushes any noticeable tone variation right down to the end of its travel. Using a 500k pot moves that useable section to an even smaller portion of the travel.

But (and it’s quite a big but), a 250k pot will knock a bit more treble off the basic guitar tone than a 500k pot will, despite the real control coming after maybe turning down by 40%. If you don’t want this loss, but still want a tone control that’s useable, then you could consider a 250k ‘no load’ pot. This had a break in the track at the ‘10’ position, so the tone capacitor remains out of circuit, and you get a brighter sound than with any tone pot connected. Turn to 9 or below and the resistive track is there and you have a tone control as normal.

I really need to check the tone response out on my DAW, though a guitar speaker doesn’t produce much above 5-6kHz and I think I’m OK up to there. But you can use your guitar’s tone controls and see where you think any noticeable change in tone occurs, and if your own experience is similar to mine.

[Groovyman32]

The Tele looks great in the photos, well done!

Thanks - when the rules change enough I'll bring it over so you can give me an up close critic. I think the set up is close - but I'm concerned that the low E intonation is nearly maxed out.

What don’t you like about the tone pots? I use 250k audio pots for tone on humbuckers and single coils as I think almost nothing occurs on a 500k pot above halfway down. And audio pots to me give a more useable range over the pot’s travel.

Thanks for the analysis. I'm not sure where HBS P90s fit in the HB vs SC tone pot value debate. But what I'm finding is nothing happens until the tone control gets to about 3 or 4. I noticed the other day that the kit has A and B pots so assumed I should be using linear taper pots.

The SD wiring diagrams suggests 500k pots and the audio flavour were all I could find in the CTS mini size - so that's what I went with. I'll experiment with a parallel resister mod as you've suggested.

[McCreed]

Congratulations on reaching the end of your journey! (Well, sort of - this journey never seems to really end. There's always something that will draw us back to fix or fiddle.)

re: low E intonation - There is definitely at least a few mm to be gained on that saddle. You can snip the spring in half (or as short as necessary). It looks like it's fully compressed at the moment and preventing any further movement back. I've even seen cases where the spring is removed completely. The spring does bugger-all once the string is on and under tension. This may not be considered optimal, but short of re-locating the bridge, it is a workable solution.

Now, I don't mean to rain or your parade, but I'd like to comment on the photos you posted of the nut. I'll apologise in advance if I'm being too critical. On the positive side, your break angle on the slots look really good!

However in the first photo, the top of the nut on the bass side appears to be sloping toward the fretboard rather than the headstock.
Typically when profiling the top of this style of nut, the high point should be on the fretboard side and slope away to the fretboard side. With sloping toward the headstock, the string slot depth is gradually diminished along its length. I know it's only travelling 3mm through the slot, but this is general accepted practise.

The treble side in the second photo looks to be sloping in the right direction but still quite high above the top of the string IMO. The overall string depth* is also deeper than I would have them, but fixing that and the profile is easily done with a flat file and sandpaper as well as being subject to opinion/personal preference.

*I recently commented about string slot depth twice in this thread in post #153 and in my edit to post #179.

[Groovyman32]

Congratulations on reaching the end of your journey! (Well, sort of - this journey never seems to really end. There's always something that will draw us back to fix or fiddle.)

re: low E intonation - There is definitely at least a few mm to be gained on that saddle. You can snip the spring in half (or as short as necessary). It looks like it's fully compressed at the moment and preventing any further movement back. I've even seen cases where the spring is removed completely. The spring does bugger-all once the string is on and under tension. This may not be considered optimal, but short of re-locating the bridge, it is a workable solution.

Now, I don't mean to rain or your parade, but I'd like to comment on the photos you posted of the nut. I'll apologise in advance if I'm being too critical. On the positive side, your break angle on the slots look really good!

However in the first photo, the top of the nut on the bass side appears to be sloping toward the fretboard rather than the headstock.
Typically when profiling the top of this style of nut, the high point should be on the fretboard side and slope away to the fretboard side. With sloping toward the headstock, the string slot depth is gradually diminished along its length. I know it's only travelling 3mm through the slot, but this is general accepted practise.

The treble side in the second photo looks to be sloping in the right direction but still quite high above the top of the string IMO. The overall string depth* is also deeper than I would have them, but fixing that and the profile is easily done with a flat file and sandpaper as well as being subject to opinion/personal preference.

*I recently commented about string slot depth twice in this thread in post #153 and in my edit to post #179.

Thanks Mc!

For the low intonation - of course - hadn’t thought about shortening the spring. Where it currently is just about okay. There’s probably a quarter to half a turn left. But good to know I have options. I was wondering how the bridge position can be off but I did measure the scale with the kit bridge and then later swapped to the Gotoh. I guess it might be just that little bit different.

For the nut work - please do comment - I’m willing to listen to any feedback. That’s the only way to improve.

I agree that it’s way off perfect and do plan to refine it or even replace it - probably at the next string change. It’s also a little sharp on the corners and I’m cross with myself for glueing it in about half a mm off centre - careless. But it’s only in with three spots of glue so it should be easy to sort out. It also seems to be functioning okay it least to my ears and fingers. Like I say, I reckon I could get the action lower but with the blanks I have it’s a lot of work to get them even close. Over doing it would be massive pain.


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[McCreed]

For the nut work - please do comment - I’m willing to listen to anything feedback. That’s the only way to improve.

No worries. I've done a fair amount of nut work over the last 5 years and I'm still improving my methods and learning better ways of doing this & that.

I agree that it’s way off perfect and do plan to refine it or even replace it - probably at the next string change.

You probably needn't replace it. The slots look good and there's plenty of material there to work with. Nothing there that can't be fixed as far as I can see. It's hard to tell 100% from the photo angle, but the string action looks acceptable (maybe a little high?) better to need to go down than up!
With fine tuning the slots, I will just do one stroke of the file; put the string back; check the height; repeat. It can be tedious, but better than sawing away with the file only to find you've gone too far!

[Simon Barden]

Never assume that one bridge is going to be a direct replacement for another. You really do need to double check all the measurements.

Where did you set your saddles when measuring the scale length? The PBG build guide is just plain wrong at telling you to set them halfway. They need to be pretty much all the way forwards, as you should only ever have to move them rearwards from the scale length position.

[Groovyman32]

Never assume that one bridge is going to be a direct replacement for another. You really do need to double check all the measurements.

Where did you set your saddles when measuring the scale length? The PBG build guide is just plain wrong at telling you to set them halfway. They need to be pretty much all the way forwards, as you should only ever have to move them rearwards from the scale length position.

Ah well that might be the problem then. I tried to position the bridge so that the scale line was in middle of the saddles’ range of movement.


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