72 RI tele custom build with pictures

So far I've gathered parts for some time now and it's time to start putting it all together.
Well, everything besides string trees.

This is a project for me and my son and it's our first build. Any input and direction will be greatly apreciated.

Our first obstacle was the neck to body fit.

particulalry the screw holes didnt' align. Using the neck plate as a guide I found the bolt pattern to be perfect on both the neck and body, so material had to be removed somewhere.

We decided that we could buy 3 more MIM 72 RI bodies for the price of the one WD Vintage moder neck so we removed the .032" interference from the bottom side of the heel pocket.

I'ts not the straightest, but we have the clearence the neck needs.

Next Item to over come was to ream the tuning peg holes. I couldn't get info on the tuners I had and I didn't have acess at the time to my calipers so I decided that I would order the headstock drilled to the smallest available size and worry about that later.

Today is later :mrgreen:

So I had 11/32 peg holes and needed 10mm for the Fender script tuning machines. I also found out that the two little **** on each machine would have to have a mating dimple to be drilled also. It seems that the Q-sawn maple is too damn hard to just seat them by pulling them down with the tuner nut.

So I took a 25/64 drill bit and turned down a pilot to 11/32, then filled the flutes of the pilot with epoxy putty and polished back down to size.

Armed with my 6 time use cutter and a cordless drill I opened the holes to size. ( oh yeah, I had a masking tape drill stop :smile: ) I decided that I should only ream as deep as the shoulder on the tuner for better stability.

I put the tuners in, aligned them with a straight edge and gave them a gentle tap (soft face hammer) to mark the spots to recieve the ****.
a #38 drill bit (.110) and my trusty DeWalt and the tuners seated with a bit of heavy thumb pressure.


Next on the to do list is the decal.

Decal added.

I used a few pics from the web to try and guess the propper location, it seems nothing really aligns with any thing.

So using a few things as guides, I put the "T" in telecaster over the scalop in the headstock, Lowered the "Fender" logo as deep in the first swell as I could without letting the Pat# get too close to the edge or the "r" in telecaster be raised to high.

We debated over using a decal at all, we never wanted to present it as anything other than what it is and that is a partscaster (we both take too much pride in saying we put it all together), but something really needed to be there.

Next, endless coats of laquer and wet sanding the neck.

Quick Question.

whats the best oil / wax / preservitive to use on the ebony finger board??

YIKES!

7 AM this morning and I started in again on the neck, I'm not sure how my wife knocked the damn thing out of my hands when she was still in bed, but she did! big ole mar right across the decal and its two top coats.

Wet sanded the decal and mar out with 800 and started all over.

It's nearly 1 AM and I'm about to put on its 14th coat of laquer with about 30 minutes flash time between coats. the last 10 have been pretty heavy.

I'll give it 12 hrs cure time before I wet sand it smooth starting with 800 and working up to 2500.

I managed to fill all the old pick guard holes with epoxy, not many lined up with the new pickguard for what ever reason, and the ones that did, the screws were drivin in at AWFUL ANGLES! leaves something to say about MIM finish quality.

Tommorow, I'll mock up the electronics and maybe sling some solder.

Can't wait to see more pics!

Nice custom dude, what pickups are you putting in it?

Nice custom dude, what pickups are you putting in it?

the neck pup is a deluxe wrhb bridge pup. after hearing a lot of clips of wrhb's my son asked if we could put a bridge pup in the neck.

sure, why not!

the bridge pup is of unkown origin, my suspicions are MIM, 3mm x .50 screw fit it.

Like I told my son, this isn't some pristine vintage guitar, the only value it has is the parts it is made of. it BEGS to be modded. so new pickups are always an option :)

we've talked too that if we sent the pick guard to a reputable pick guard mfr like WD Music Products http://www.pickguards.com/ we could have another pick guard built that all the PG screw holes would align and put a SC lip stick PUP in the neck.

we already have the output jack and bridge picup wired with pins and sockets so a quick change PG would be easy.

not much done today,

I been power shopping for Christmas ALL FRIGGIN DAY!

any how I threw a couple screws in the neck (against my better judgement)(I still think that laquer is too soft) so that one of the local guitar hero's could try out the feel of the SRV neck profile.

his comment was it begs to be played "thumb over" (at least thats what I think he said) with the thumb on the low E string. It's pretty much how my son plays.

So I took a sec to snap a quick shot of the mockup. I would have tried to get a more complete pic, but the batteries died in the camera and the only othe AA batteries were wrapped up and under the tree already.

Hello and Happy Holidays to all! May each and every one of you have a very prosperous and happy New Year.

Let me tell you, this being my first real experience with nitro/lacquer it is nothing like what you read in how to articles.

I've built award winning choppers and not done near as much wet sanding as I've done on this infernal neck!

I'm having one trouble spot and have admitted defeat and handed it over to my painter. The back profile of the neck is sanded down to 2500 and slicker than snot on a doorknob. the face and back of the headstock are so flat and sooooo smoth that the water just beads up and rolls off onto the shop floor.

That damn flat edge on the top of the headstock near the tuners! every time I get it close to being flat and smooth I hit wood! masked everything off and put 15 freakin coats of lacquer on it, so thick it looks like its dipped in urethane and I still managed to get off kilter and sand an edge down to bare wood!

SO! I've admitted defeat and moved on.

Wiring the thing up!

spent an hour pouring over the schematic, drew it up on paint so I can have a hard copy with a color code that matches my wires. except I'm out of ink! LOL so I go to a friends and print it up there.

alright! ready to wire now. so I start with the bridge pup assy. my son at my side questioning me intently what exactly is the difference between shielding and ground. doing my best to explain that ground is the companion to signal and that shielding is everything that is metal you can touch wired in a chain and attached to the ground. I plugged in an amp and put a patchcord in the input and touched the tip. BUZZZ. thats the signal. touch the sleeve and nothing. he got the point.

Then he asked why the bridge isnt gorunded. good question! it should be! so I sand off some chrome on the bottom of the bridge till I got to copper. a great place to solder a shiel lead to, that is it would be a great place to solder to if it wasn't on top of the body!

so off it came and moved it less than 1/16th of an inch and the bridge sat flat!

FINALLY some forward movement.

I have actually got a part screwed to the body!

not to let the momentum cease I screwed the strap buttons on too!

I'm quitting tonight while I'm ahead and will wire the the harness on a pickguard we aren't going to use.

as usual I will post pics of that progress too.

Please note the blob of what I can only guess to be epoxy on the face of the body toward the bottom of the second picture. my painter says we can buff that off to when we polish the headstock.

Sweet man. Your son sounds like a good sort asking lots of questions, haha, atleast hes learning something. Sweet guitar. Why did you go with an ebony fingerboard?

Well, your right about him being a good sort!

It's his axe and he chose the ebony. I'm hoping it will sound brighter through that wrhb pup, but I think he chose it more for apearence.

LOL I can't blame him for that, If I ever found a silver sparkle tele like Don Rich's I think I'd have to buy it cause its so damn good looking.

Well It all came together yesterday!

finshed the wiring harness, then took it to my good friend James's shop for final assembly.

I've used James this way before, I get excited and tend to plow ahead at the end of a project, James and his overwhelming OCD keeps the breaks on and keeps me from doing something terrible stupid. besides he always has something really cool on his bench, this time a 1974 Yamaha 750 something or another.

With the old scratched up pickguard wired (the new PG lines up perfect hole for hole edge to edge with the old one) we decided to use that to layout the 16 PG screw holes in case we gouged it with the drill or something.

Notice the vintage pink plasticaster :lol: James's 3yo son bolted into the shop weilding it and looking eerily like Pete Townsend proceeded to beat my son with it

We then transfered the harness to thew PG and screwed it down. let me tell you that pot cavity got real tight using those Sprauge 225P caps for tone and treble bleed on the WRHB. so tight that the shield wire from the bridge ended up touching one of the bridge PUP's signal wires somewher and shorted it out (easy fix with some shrink tube)

Hi,
Could you explain the wiring you've done. Never seen three caps being used. What would that do to sound/tone?

Here my son is installing the PG assembly,

Then stringing it up.

It was late, and the Michigan cold was creeping hard into the shop. so we didn't start to set it up proper, just jacked the bridge screws till there was no buzz and half eyeballed the intonation.

Hi,
Could you explain the wiring you've done. Never seen three caps being used. What would that do to sound/tone?

The tele deluxe has 4 pots like a Les Paul, 2 volume 2 tone.
I used a .047uf on the HB tone pot and a .022 on the Sc bridge tone pot. This is a fairly common set up.

the third cap is a .001uf treble bleed cap.

The Fender WRHB (neck humbucker) is a notoriusly dark pick up. as you roll the volume back, particularly on a pickup like this, the pickups voicing gets even darker.

to lessen that effect a small cap is used to shunt a bit of the highs from the PUP signal past the pot.

Thanks for that and also the diagram. Had not seen the wiring of a tele deluxe before. Much clearer now!

now that diagram if for the neck pickup only,

the bridge pickup is wired similiary only without the treble bleed cap.

both go to a right angle switchcraft switch similiar to a les paul.

Note also this is NOT the stock Fender wiring. It's a common mod, the Fender factory wiring, when the switch is in the center position, has a lot of interaction between the volumes and tone knobs. It reminds me of a 5E3 style amp where setting the knobs is like using a Ouija board.

when wired in this manner, with the switch in the middle position, you have volume and tone control for each pickup with very little interaction.

You able to hear the ebony effect yet? I am currently working on one and wonder if it feels different. I notice that they can be polished to be seriously smooth.

great build l hope mine turns out as good

the neck pup is a deluxe wrhb bridge pup. after hearing a lot of clips of wrhb's my son asked if we could put a bridge pup in the neck.



That's actually a good idea as the stock WRHB bridge pickup has an alnico 5 magnet in it. They use an alnico 2 magnet in the neck position. Swapping them around the way you're doing should produce a more pleasant, brighter tone than the alnico 2.

Nice project!