I built a guitar

[dblues]

Technically I built a guitar body to rebuild an old Danelectro Convertible. When I got it in the late 70's it had been well used, abused, and generally unappreciated. It was finished off by a fire in about 1984. I took it apart and stored the various pieces for years. In the early 90's I threw out the body pieces (?!! I know) but first traced the body contour because I had this crazy idea of making a guitar someday. The many skilled and generous builders on this forum have inspired me to build the Tele I've always wanted and this project was undertaken to develop the skills necessary. Specific goals were to learn pattern making, routing and finishing skills. Along the way I decided to make this first build a gift to my daughter who has begun to get serious about playing guitar the last few years. Of course I asked for visitation rights (with the guitar) when I gave it to her on her birthday last April. Pictures and discussion of the build will follow.

[Guitar novice]

Love the grain on the sides.

Good job

[Colt W. Knight]

Pretty freakin cool

[jkingma]

Originally Posted by Guitar novice

Love the grain on the sides.

Good job

Originally Posted by Colt W. Knight

Pretty freakin cool

Yeah... how 'bout some more pics.

[dblues]

Originally Posted by jkingma

Yeah... how 'bout some more pics.

Thanks Guitar novice and Colt. More pics are on the way jkingma.

[dblues]

Ok here's the beginning. The tuners are still a mess and I wasn't sure if they would be functional but they turned out fine for this build. I ended up not using the control assembly. I hadn't noticed this yet and the camera angle exaggerates the visual cues but I later discover the fret dot is indeed 1/32 of an inch off center. Gotta love Dano quality control. There were other issues with the neck that concerned me in terms of playability but it all came out good. It plays like a Danelectro believe it or not.



Here's the neck and a piece of 2x10 pine from Lowes for the body. You can see a repaired split in the neck at the tuner holes. This piece of pine became the "test" build as it received various experiments and first attempts at many of the critical routing, cutting and finishing steps.



I'm sure inquiring minds want to know WTF I was thinking with the psycho wall paper covering so here goes: 1)while I have adequate finishing skills I was not yet up to attempting a serious go at a decent finish job including polishing multiple coats etc. 2) I'm not an interior design history expert but I'm pretty sure this wall paper is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1950s' vintage so in my twisted mind it fits with the Danelectro asthetic. 3) I rescued it from the attic of an old house that has sentimental value to my family and my Daughter agreed it was cool.

[dblues]

Here's some more pictures of the finished build jkingma:

[stinkey]

I like the wallpaper solution, very fifties, to me. And it's an easy way to get a finish on the instrument.

[BoogerRooger]

Fine work, vintage and original working together. I like the cut off Tele bridge.

[davmac]

Absolutely glorious! I love everything about this.

[dblues]

Originally Posted by stinkey

I like the wallpaper solution, very fifties, to me. And it's an easy way to get a finish on the instrument.

That's what I thought and it was pretty easy. I had to pick and choose what I was going to spend time on and the finishing went pretty quick.

[dblues]

Originally Posted by BoogerRooger

Fine work, vintage and original working together. I like the cut off Tele bridge.

I was trying to get as much Tele construction experience as possible. I actually bought a cheapo full size bridge before I realized the lipstick PUs don't fit. Note to self, measure stuff.

[dblues]

Originally Posted by davmac

Absolutely glorious! I love everything about this.

Thanks. It was great fun. I'm going to post more pictures of the construction although I sometimes forgot to take pictures for days and weeks on end. As I mentioned earlier none of this would have happened without the generous sharing of knowledge by many on this forum.

[Barncaster]

Hey d,

A VERY cool build! How do the mini and lipstick tube get along? Would love a video. I always think it's great to make an instrument with or for your kids. They'll remember you through it forever.

That neck burn reminds me of Peter Frampton's black LP that he just got back after thinking it was burned up in a plane crash in South America I think in the early 80's. It's the one on the cover of the "Frampton Comes Alive" album. Your neck has that "to hell and back and got the singes to prove it" look.

Rob

[crazydave911]

Really sweet build!

[thinling]

I think that I would want to buy that if I saw it!
Can you rotate the neck pickup to have the poles by the neck? I think it looks better that way but probably makes no difference sound wise.

[dblues]

Thanks Barncaster,crazydave911 and thinling. The lipstick and minihumbucker sound great together and I can dial in what I want separately but I am not 100% happy with the tonal difference when switching from one to the other. I've looked at threads regarding this and will eventually experiment to see if I can do something about that. Thinling, the placement of that minihumbucker is probably the only regret I have with anything on this build. Yes I could add wire to the PU and turn it around but I really think it would look better right below the neck like a Tele neck PU. I put it where it is with the poles down hoping to avoid the above problem and it didn't do that to my ears. It's all good though cause my Daughter could care less where the neck PU is. It's actually kind of refreshing to talk guitar with such an anti-guitar geek person. After a long winded explanation of how to use the volume and tone knobs she'll say something like: "So when you turn'em like this you can hear it better?" A, yea. I guess that's pretty much it.

[Colt W. Knight]

What size pots do you have in that guitar?

[dblues]

250k.

[Picton]

Excellent work. Danos (and their clones) are great fun to build and play. Good solution on the wallpaper.