Nocaster `51 kit Tele

[StainlessSteel]

I live near Palm Springs California, I am an inventor with a patent pending very cool guitar amp. I may show it at the Amp Show in LA so I decided to build a Tele from the Grizzly kit.
I took the saddles out and ground them so they would stagger insted of bending the damn screws to get the intonation right.
I also tapped the intonation screws to 6-32 and the back plate so now I have heavy duty stainless intonation adjustment screws.
I removed the stock pickups and just dropped in Custom Shop `51 Nocaster pickups, ebay.
I also bought a Telecaster wiring harness - WITH 4-WAY SWITCH MOD! Not only are the parts better but they have the 4-way switch settings:

Position 1: Bridge pickup only
Position 2: Bridge & neck pickups in parallel
Position 3: Neck pickup only
Position 4: Bridge & neck pickups in series (higher output & MUCH beefier tone!)

Today I sat outside and sanded the neck and body down so all the edges are smooth and shot it with more sand sealer.
I had already drilled and installed the string furrels. I know some teles are top strung but I suspect that would effect the sustain and overall playing.
I played this grizzly kit for a few weeks just bolted together stock and it sounded pretty good but the frets seemed really high for me. I took a 8" plank of wood and glued sandpaper to it to lower the frets a bit than used 600 grit. I did this before to my old strat and it worked great.

I replaced the stock white pick guard with a new black guard .
Today I ordered Reranch Fender guitar amber for the neck and a can of Fender butterscotch blond. http://reranchstore.stores.yahoo.net/fencuscol.html
I will post some picks soon.
If anyone knows sombody at Fender , Crate , Marshall or any of the big Amp manufaterers, I would like to hear from you.
Jim in CA.

[fenderix]

Welcome to the TDPRI, Jim! You did the right thing to register - good to have you with us. You'll like it here.

Looking forward to the pics.

Enjoy!

[StainlessSteel]

Originally Posted by fenderix

Welcome to the TDPRI, Jim! You did the right thing to register - good to have you with us. You'll like it here.

Looking forward to the pics.

Enjoy!

Thank you,
My last guitar build was a hand carved neckthrough alder/maple and that sustain I also found in the Telecaster. I guess I am hooked now!
From the Tele mods I have seen , everyone has their own way of making this this classic design evolve to fit. Im also guessing alot a faking is out there.
The main reason I picked the Grizzly kit build was the alder body and I didnt want to feel guilty about altering a real classic Fender.

BTW here are two very cool links I found. This first lets you find chords and scales in any tuning http://www.scalerator.com/cgi-bin/sd...F%23AD&size=30

and this is an online tuner incase you bring your pc to band practice
http://www.gieson.com/Library/projects/utilities/tuner/

[diffeecult]

Welcome aboard.

[shinigami747]

hi stainlesssteel!

seems you're having a grand time with your git kit.

enjoy and welcome!

[Doug Ferguson]

Welcome. Cool sounding build you've got going there. Don't forget the pics when she's ready!

[StainlessSteel]

Originally Posted by fenderix

Welcome to the TDPRI, Jim! You did the right thing to register - good to have you with us. You'll like it here.

Looking forward to the pics.

Enjoy!

It took me a half an hour to re assemble my new Tele and I have spent 3 days trying to re sizes and upload the photos.

[StainlessSteel]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteel

It took me a half an hour to re assemble my new Tele and I have spent 3 days trying to re sizes and upload the photos.

I think the upgrade on the harness and the 51 NoCaster pickups ,was the right choice.
My build cost was $130 Tele Kit
$69 4 way harness
$120 51 NoCaster pickups
$ 35 Fender guitar amber and butterscotch blond.

BTW thats my patent pending 65 watt guitar amp. I have a 150 watter too! This is by far the best sounding amp I have ever played through. Very crisp sound with a devestating lower tones you feel in your chest. That build cost with our attorney fees, about $35,000 so far.
I have emailed and faxed everyone. Im looking for a partner that understands our economy isnt going to suck forever! PM me if thats you.

[StainlessSteel]

I hated the bridge saddles. After turning those cheap intonation screws I stripped the phillips heads so I went to the hardwear store and bought three new 1 1/2 machins screws that were fatter than what came with the Telle. 6/32. I also bought a 6 / 32 drill and tap and re drilled the back bridge plate so the new screws slide through.
I also picked up a piece of Aluminum 1/8" x 1/2" - 3 FT. It cuts like paper with tin snips. I simply cut three 3/4 " wide pieces, drilled and tapped the screw hole to 6 / 32. I pulled up a picture of how the wilkinsin bridge has the saddles ground in differnt configurations and copied it. Also ground them each to the right hight,I was able to correctly set the intonation and it playes perfect now.
This was a very good cheap fix.

[jkingma]

Great looking guitar.

Welcome to the TDPRI.

[StainlessSteel]

Originally Posted by jkingma

Great looking guitar.

Welcome to the TDPRI.

Thank you. Here is a my Tele with my 150 watt sphere amp. Its about 23" wide.You can here this from blocks away!

[The OB]

those salad bowl amps are cool looking do you need a test pilot ?
the guitar is sweet as well

[Stuco]

The guitar looks good. Do those kits seem to be of decent quality? What are the tuners like?

[StainlessSteel]

Originally Posted by Stuco

The guitar looks good. Do those kits seem to be of decent quality? What are the tuners like?

I looked at both the Grizzly kit and the Saga TC 10 kit. They both looked the same except the Saga kit has a Basswood body.
The Grizzly has an alder body so I picked the Grizzly.

I was hoping to have a maple neck and both kits have rosewood. I dyed the rosewood fretboard black so it didnt look like "the kit Tele". I also changed to a black pick guard. I guess they only come with white.
The tuner covers come apart from the tunners unless they are screwed in and the tuner metal sleves fit too loose in the neck tuner holes so I fixed it. They seem to tune up very well and stay put.

The wiring harness and pots and switch are all cheap compared to what I replaced them with. The knobs are cheap plastic, I replaced them with steel knobs.
I really liked the sound of the bridge pick up it came with but the neck PU could have just fallen out and I would never missed it.

So basicly I spent $129 on a neck and body, bridge ,tuner hardware. string furrels.
This guitar plays in tune, Its heavy and has great sustain it feels like solid wood.

[StainlessSteel]

Les Paul:
Les Paul: In His Own WordsNine months before Les Paul's death Thursday morning, Spinner had the honor of speaking with the music icon at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tribute. As captivating as he was knowledgeable, Paul reflected on his journey from youthful tinkerer to inventor of the instrument that would define rock 'n' roll.

"When I was a kid there was only one person in my hometown that played the guitar, and that was me. It was all piano in the old days. The guitar was rare.

What we did was take an acoustical instrument -- which was a very apologetic, wonderful, meek instrument -- and turned it into a pit bull. And that's what happened -- the guitar started to become more important in Waukesha, Wisc., the Chicago area, the Midwest. In 1930, I was already playing on the electric guitar, playing in a little bar in Cleveland, in Rochester, some state fairs. I played Ithaca, Binghamton, Rochester, all the way up to Boston, just everywhere you could play between Chicago and New York, exposing this instrument to all the players or those that would like to be players. Soon everybody wanted a guitar. It was just unbelievable. The people were running up and down the street going from one store to the other.

And there was no such thing as amplifiers, so I had to build my own -- I took my mother's radio and I turned it into one. I did the same thing with a guitar. I just took the guitar and said, 'Hey, it's not loud enough.' I was playing a little barbecue stand halfway to Milwaukee and some critic that was sitting in the backseat of a car, ordering a sandwich, wrote a note that said, 'You know, what you're doing right out there is great, but your guitar is not loud enough.' So I went home and told mom about it. She said, 'You'll figure it out, you'll figure it out.' What I figured out was how to make that guitar louder and better. First, I took an acoustical guitar and ended up filling it with Plaster of Paris. I tried everything, and it finally worked. I said, 'I'm gonna make two guitars, one out of wood and one out of a big long piece of railroad track and make both of them identical.' I used the same telephone for a pickup, the part that you listen to on the telephone, the magnet and the coil. I placed that under the string and I was just playing through my mother's radio. Between the wooden guitar and the metal one, the railroad track was much better. I ran to my mother, saying, 'I found it! I found it!' My mother said, 'The day you see a cowboy on a horse playing a railroad track,' and she blew me right out of the water with that. I said, 'It's got to be wood. Okay, we're gonna make it the most beautiful piece of dense wood that will be as close to that railroad track as we can get with that good sound.'

I remember I would go into a club in the very early days with my electric. I didn't care who was there with his saxophone or trumpet or piano or drums, I could drown them out. It became a monster, from a wimp to a monster.

I think of the impact often. I was lucky young kids came along -- Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck -- and said, 'I wanna do that.'"

[mudbean]

Howdy, neighbor!!

Why don't you bring that new Tele (heck, bring that crazy amp, too!) down to Jackalope Ranch on 111 in Indio (across from Shields Date Farm) this Sunday nite, Aug 16, for the Sunday Nite Open Blues Jam, 8pm 'til midnite.

I'll be playing bass for the house band, Radio60.

See ya there!

mud