I began work today on a project I've been planning for a couple of months. I've never built an instrument before, but as this is the year I turn 40 (in less than a month) and my Dad turns 70 (in November) I thought it would be a fun project for us to work on together. Dad has a well equipped shop and a good amount of experience working with wood, while I've done bass and guitar hardware and electronics before and - hopefully - know enough to design a good instrument. This is a guitar build that's more Telecaster than anything else, though I've made a few changes in the design to suit my own preferences. I'll get into those in a bit.
The woods I've chosen to work with here are all native to the Pacific Northwest (or at least they've been here long enough that they're well established). For the neck I'm using Walnut and Oregon Myrtlewood, and for the body I'm using Douglas Fir. Hence, WMD. Walnut, Myrtlewood, Doug Fir. Here's the raw materials before any cutting began.
The neck is going to be a 5 piece laminate with the Walnut as well as a couple of stripes if Myrtle, because the board I bought to use for the fretboard had more than enough to do both, and because I've always liked the look of the mahogany stripes in the Yamaha BB headstocks - this ought to end up looking something like that, but with the dark and light colors reversed. Here's the glue-up of the neck blank:
A better view before glueing and clamping it all together:
You can already see my first mistake - when I cut the Myrtlewood stripes, I made them wider than the thickness of the walnut. I went ahead but realized while glueing them together that this made it harder to ensure that the back of the board is totally flush. I left the board thick enough that I can plane it down a bit and still be at 1" once the fretboard gets glued on, so I don't think it's a critical error,.just something to learn from for now.
Speaking of the fretboard... Check out the ripples figuring in this Myrtlewood! It's even more striking in person, and I haven't even sanded it smooth yet.
I also got the body blank glued up. This is a bit less exciting looking for now, though the grain on the Doug Fir is nice and straight and I think it'll look nice once it's finished.
Now for error number 2: I accidentally planed this down thinner than I had meant to go, I was aiming for a bit over 1.75" but ended up with 1.70, and it'll lose a bit of that with sanding. I think it'll be ok but I'm going to measure my electric components first to make sure I can get my cavities deep enough without leaving too little on the back. Worst case scenario, I'll get a drop top of something pretty like big leaf Maple or redwood, but I'm hoping it won't come to that.
I chose to make this with some woods that I found very attractive, so I'm sticking with a simple Tru Oil finish on this to let the beauty of the wood shine through. I plan to keep it fairly satin, no shiny gloss finish needed here.
Now for the technical details:
The body will be a standard telecaster shape with a standard Tele bridge, but instead of the single coil pickup I've got a DiMarzio Tone Zone T, a high output rail humbucker. The neck is going to have a Bootstrap Squeaky Mean POP, which is also a fairly high output pickup. Needless to say this is going to be a gnarlier sounding instrument than my standard single coil equipped Squier Tele. The neck is going to be a thick, chunky club based on the 1954 Telecaster profile (I am using the Stew Mac template for the neck profile), but with a more gentle 9.5" radius. For the headstock I'm doing a Rx'd configuration based on a MusicMan style guitar, final design still TBD. It'll be a standard Fender 25.5" scale length.
Electronics wise, I've got a four way switch, which I'm wiring up to have the standard Telecaster pickup options, plus one that puts the neck and bridge pickups in series. The bridge pickup is also going to be connected to a push/pull pot which will split one of the coils off, so this is going to have a lot of options as far as electronics settings go. I'm sticking to the standard master volume and master tone control, with a .022 uF cap on 500K pots.
This is going to me a slow moving project as I'm limited to time on the weekends and maybe an occasional weekday evening, but I'm also in the middle of a kitchen remodel and I've got two young kids that demand a lot of attention. So please follow along and offer your thoughts if you're interested, but be aware that this will take a while to finish up.
The woods I've chosen to work with here are all native to the Pacific Northwest (or at least they've been here long enough that they're well established). For the neck I'm using Walnut and Oregon Myrtlewood, and for the body I'm using Douglas Fir. Hence, WMD. Walnut, Myrtlewood, Doug Fir. Here's the raw materials before any cutting began.
The neck is going to be a 5 piece laminate with the Walnut as well as a couple of stripes if Myrtle, because the board I bought to use for the fretboard had more than enough to do both, and because I've always liked the look of the mahogany stripes in the Yamaha BB headstocks - this ought to end up looking something like that, but with the dark and light colors reversed. Here's the glue-up of the neck blank:
A better view before glueing and clamping it all together:
You can already see my first mistake - when I cut the Myrtlewood stripes, I made them wider than the thickness of the walnut. I went ahead but realized while glueing them together that this made it harder to ensure that the back of the board is totally flush. I left the board thick enough that I can plane it down a bit and still be at 1" once the fretboard gets glued on, so I don't think it's a critical error,.just something to learn from for now.
Speaking of the fretboard... Check out the ripples figuring in this Myrtlewood! It's even more striking in person, and I haven't even sanded it smooth yet.
I also got the body blank glued up. This is a bit less exciting looking for now, though the grain on the Doug Fir is nice and straight and I think it'll look nice once it's finished.
Now for error number 2: I accidentally planed this down thinner than I had meant to go, I was aiming for a bit over 1.75" but ended up with 1.70, and it'll lose a bit of that with sanding. I think it'll be ok but I'm going to measure my electric components first to make sure I can get my cavities deep enough without leaving too little on the back. Worst case scenario, I'll get a drop top of something pretty like big leaf Maple or redwood, but I'm hoping it won't come to that.
I chose to make this with some woods that I found very attractive, so I'm sticking with a simple Tru Oil finish on this to let the beauty of the wood shine through. I plan to keep it fairly satin, no shiny gloss finish needed here.
Now for the technical details:
The body will be a standard telecaster shape with a standard Tele bridge, but instead of the single coil pickup I've got a DiMarzio Tone Zone T, a high output rail humbucker. The neck is going to have a Bootstrap Squeaky Mean POP, which is also a fairly high output pickup. Needless to say this is going to be a gnarlier sounding instrument than my standard single coil equipped Squier Tele. The neck is going to be a thick, chunky club based on the 1954 Telecaster profile (I am using the Stew Mac template for the neck profile), but with a more gentle 9.5" radius. For the headstock I'm doing a Rx'd configuration based on a MusicMan style guitar, final design still TBD. It'll be a standard Fender 25.5" scale length.
Electronics wise, I've got a four way switch, which I'm wiring up to have the standard Telecaster pickup options, plus one that puts the neck and bridge pickups in series. The bridge pickup is also going to be connected to a push/pull pot which will split one of the coils off, so this is going to have a lot of options as far as electronics settings go. I'm sticking to the standard master volume and master tone control, with a .022 uF cap on 500K pots.
This is going to me a slow moving project as I'm limited to time on the weekends and maybe an occasional weekday evening, but I'm also in the middle of a kitchen remodel and I've got two young kids that demand a lot of attention. So please follow along and offer your thoughts if you're interested, but be aware that this will take a while to finish up.
