Couple of new builds - one Tele, one custom

[Bronkowitz]

This year I built guitars #2 and #3. I don't get much time to do this, so a couple a year is about all I can manage.

The first one isn't quite complete yet. It needs the finishing touches, but this time of year it's almost impossible to find the time. It's a walnut Tele finished in Tru Oil. The neck is maple, and the fretboard is bubinga with panga panga inlays. (It seems like every time I go to the hardwood store for something I come back with a 3/4" x 4" x 4' piece of some exotic wood that was just begging me to take it home to turn it into fretboard blanks!)

[Bronkowitz]

The second guitar is one of my own design. I wanted to do something unique that I hadn't see before, so I had a lot of fun with it.

The body is cherry, the neck is a mahogany/maple laminate sandwich. The fretboard is purpleheart with handmade curvy diamond MOP inlays. The headstock is a bookmatched curly maple veneer I resawed from a different project. You can see the contour I added to the front of it to give it something distinctive. The jack is located next to the hook at the bottom, just between the last two knobs.

I made up my own wiring scheme. The knob closest to the headstock is a blend pot so I can dial in any combination of the pickups. The next knob is a master volume. The third knob is a push-pull pot with two different tone options. And the fourth knob (nearest the base) is a five-way rotary switch with the following configurations:

1 - series humbuckers (neck and bridge)
2 - single coil (neck), series humbucker (bridge)
3 - single coil (neck and bridge)
4 - series humbucker (neck), single coil (bridge)
5 - parallel humbuckers (neck and bridge)


I've already got a laundry list of improvements I want to make for it on the next go around. :)









ETA: You can see the cherry board I used for this guitar in this post in the thread where I detailed my first build last year.

[Bronkowitz]

I finally got around to digging out the broken bridge screw on the walnut Tele. So I finished making the nut and set the action and intonation on it tonight. It plays great!

Sorry, I didn't do a great job of documenting this one, so there aren't really any in-process pics.

[Bentley]

Ooooh, love both. That design is really unique, those carves must have been annoying to sand in, since you have to go with the grain.

[Bronkowitz]

Originally Posted by Bentley

Ooooh, love both. That design is really unique, those carves must have been annoying to sand in, since you have to go with the grain.

Thanks! I didn't go with the grain to lay in the contour. I used a v-tool to create the channel and then used a random orbit sander to create the gentle slopes. I took a lot of care to clean up the sanding marks after the bulk of the material was removed, but it was a lot easier than I thought it would be.