My New Guitar

[RobE30]

Nice man! I'm gathering pieces to make my own tele, except I want to try to make a thinline. Have you made your own neck before? There is an excellent UK site about guitar building and the guy makes his own neck w/ hand tools. Glad to hear you have all 10 fingers. Keep up the good work and progress!

[shiftbmw]

Nice man! I'm gathering pieces to make my own tele, except I want to try to make a thinline. Have you made your own neck before? There is an excellent UK site about guitar building and the guy makes his own neck w/ hand tools. Glad to hear you have all 10 fingers. Keep up the good work and progress!

Cool. Haven't made my own neck before...that's a whole other set of tools and skills. I figure I'll take it one step at a time.

Will you be cutting the wood on the thinline or just piecing it together?

[Bimmersmith]

where are you getting your neck from? Ever heard of Warmoth?

http://www.warmoth.com/Default.aspx

[shiftbmw]

where are you getting your neck from? Ever heard of Warmoth?

http://www.warmoth.com/Default.aspx

I will most likely be getting it from USACG. Warmoth makes some nice stuff, but from what I understand they can be a bit distant. You also have to buy their "cookie cutter" standard option stuff...not much room to tweak to suit particular needs beyond what they advertise on the site. I've been in contact with Tommy from USACG and he is willing to make me exactly what I want and comes just as highly recommended as warmoth for roughly the same price.

[RobE30]

When I build my thinline, I think the back will be made out of ash and the top will be made out of quilted maple or something hard w/ a nice grain. The biggest concern I have is making the top and back mate together perfectly. Heres that website I told you about earlier. The guy makes it look easy.
http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/tutorial9.htm

[quickervicar]

You won't be disappointed with Tommy's stuff. From what I've seen it is some of the best out there.

If you're unsure about pickups, I'll throw in my bump for Rio Grandes. They offer a P90 in a Tele bridge format. It's what I have in my Robin Ranger and it is full of nasally gnarliness.

[shiftbmw]

After a two year delay, I'm back on this project, and since there was a little interest, I'll keep this thread up.

Anyways, ordered the neck. Flame maple with an ebony fretboard, jumbo frets.

Today I routed my neck pocket in my template, got it basically line to line perfect fit. Tomorrow I'll route the neck pocket in the body with the help of some new forstner bits I picked up.

Apartment sized "drill press" so I can drill straight and to depth.


Neck fit in template:


Flame maple:

[jimjim69]

Im plug in to this theard.

James

[FunfGan]

Sweet! As a guitarist and just a handyman this is incredibly interesting. Glad to see you following through!

[F34R]

I also do work work for a hobby, so I am sub'd =)

[shiftbmw]

So I got some good work done this weekend.

Transferred template to body blank with pencil. Used forstner bits to do some of the dirty work to spare the router bit. The neck pocket is by far the most critical feature, as a loose pocket means the neck position must rely entirely on the clamping force of its screws. There are also two sharp and delicate corners in this area. Since some of this area around the pocket will be visible with the pickguard and hardware installed, I masked everything to help prevent chipping.


I got lucky because the set screw came out of my bearing clamp on my bit when I was routing the control cavity. Fortunately gravity was enough to keep it down and keep me from making a mistake, but I didn't notice until after I finished routing the cavity and saw my set screw laying in the bottom. Oops...


I finished the neck pocket and set my neck in to measure scale length, and for some reason it didn't look right so I am yet to route the bridge pickup. I need to do some double checking before committing. You'll notice some small holes in the bottom of the pockets...this is because I don't have a plunge router so I drill to depth with forstner bits and have to drill slightly deeper than my routing depth. Won't make a damn bit of difference in terms of tone or appearance once everything is installed though.


Body meets neck for the first time:

[e30rapidic]

nice!!

[evandael]

i this

[Eecen]

Sweet bro, now you have a douchey little story to tell teh laydz while your being a beach guitar douche.

"Ohhhh-ugh yeah, no biggie I build this bad boy...yeeah. Ohh-umm, you wana hear this song I've been writing etc etc".

lol, nah you're probably not one of those guys. Cool project.

[shiftbmw]

Pictures below are of the finished body and paint in progress! I don't have pictures, but there was lots of sanding, sand and sealer, grain filler, and some more sanding before spraying color. Two and a half cans of clear on top. When wet sanding the paint, I still had a couple small sand throughs, but decided to patch a few and live with a few.