1950 Double Esquire Build

[preeb]

The first "Spanish Guitar" to hit the market was the Esquire and the first few Esquires were a little different then what we normally call Black Guards... maybe it's because it didn't have a black guard... but there are a few other things about it that make it unique.
The body, like all early prototypes, was made of a few pieces of Pine and was thinner at about 1 1/2"- 1 9/16". The neck was a one piece maple without a truss rod and string tree. Body was painted with black lacquer and the guard was white. there are many other small details that differ this creation from the later Teles which I'll try to show you during this build thread.

I'm not going to run my usual wood selection process as I would like this build to be as simple and pure as possible. I don't care about weight, wood figurings, frequencies...etc... I'll just do it and hope for the best.

For the body I'll use a few pieces of pine I had for a while. It's the stuff I use for jigs... but it's dry enough to be used for a guitar body. It's my first pine build. It's full of knots but I love it this way...

Since this is not a standard build I had to make a spec sheet and I'll follow it to avoid mistakes.

2 Body outlines are traced.

 

[preeb]

Early morning birds will keep me company in the shop...

Body is cut at the line on the band saw

Note the other set of wood on the back...

Template attached to the back

 

[preeb]

Robosanded

flush trimmed

Neck mounting and string ferrule holes are drilled through the back

 

[preeb]

I used a 51 Broadcaster template so the router hump has to go as the original early ones didn't have it

Like that

Front template attached and the string posts are drilled half way to meet the holes from the back (They didn't do it like that originally... but I hate the "exit wounds" on the back of the old originals... but I did took a couple of them off axis to break the straight line...LOL)

They connect 100% with the back drills...

 

[preeb]

No truss rod means no truss rod channel between the neck pocket and the pu cavity..
I set this little attachment on the template.

I use this little gadget to quickly adjust routing depths

Prototypes were routed shallow @ 1/2" - 9/16" deep. I'll do the same

Nice smell of fresh pine in the shop... all routs done real quick. Note the period correct tooling marks in the cavities.

 

[preeb]

Another shot

Here's the tricky part... the pu leads channel is drilled from the neck pocket through the neck pu cavity into th bridge pu cavity.

In order to keep enough room for the bridge pu in the very shallow cavity, the channel center needs to meet with the cavity bottom allowing the neck pu leads to run under the bridge pu height adjustment screw. The drill is done with a long HSS 1/4" bit at an angle which leaves a very shallow mark in the neck pu cavity as well.

Like that

 

[preeb]

Another channel is drilled to the control cavity. I have to be careful with my angles as this body is only 1 1/2" thick...

Stepped string ferrules drills on the back

Note the 1st and 3rd from the left... I took them a little off axis to look correct... I guess...

Knots are filled and big wood dowels are used to plug the template tooling holes. The early ones used much bigger plugs (3/16") so I do the same.

 

[preeb]

As the plugs dry I'll drill the input jack real quick

Template is used to locate the drill location and angle

A lead drill of 1/8" is drilled for the 7/8" bit that follows (see the mandatory result in the cavity wall...)

Whoops... I forgot to take shots of the roundover... nevermind...
Body is roughly sanded on both sides. Done!

 

[preeb]

Here's another view of the pu leads channel from the neck cavity

 

[MikeMurray]

Reposting, didn't realise more pics were due.

 

[preeb]

For the neck I grabbed a stiff maple blank. I never use quarter sawned maple for necks because it's a tone killer so I'll have to use a super hard blank for this trussrodless neck (-;

Outlined

Sawed

Robosanded

Flush trimmed

 

[preeb]

Tuner and neck mounting holes are drilled

Almost looks like a neck...

Super fat V neck profile is what came on the early black Esquires... I'll do th same (can't complain about that one... (-

 

[preeb]

I set the radiusing swinging jig to 9 1/2" which is the correct radius for this baby

Done

Marking dots drilled

Black resined fiber (AKA Bakelite) is used for the dots. They are punched in and sanded flat

 

[preeb]

Headstock is thinned to 0.575" (+ a little for sanding...)

and transitioned

Like that

I'm going to keep the neck 100% straight before the fret installation. This way the fret tangs pressure will back bow it a little which is needed when no truss rod is present...
Making sure it's straight with a straight edge... it is.

 

[joelstrummer]

These build-threads are awesome- very interesting to follow..

 

[preeb]

No ski jump allowed in this project..

[/IMG]

Neck-Body joint test... perfect!!!

 

[preeb]

A few more shots...

 

[preeb]

That's it for now... I'll cut the steel saddles tomorrow.
BTW, I have a little question...
Does pine need pore filling? I never used pine before and I'm not sure about this...

 

[MikeMurray]

<3 I feel giddy!!! Probably going to be my favorite build of yours so far!!!

Oh forgot to mention, looks AWESOME man. I am just sad that in SA, wood grows really fast so the only pine we can get is very very wide grained - nothing like that. We use it for construction and every other thing where cheap wood is needed

Why do you say quarter-sawn maple is a tone killer?

Mike

 

[junk mutt]

Hi preeb, Great thread as always. I was wondering about the neck having no truss rod does this affect the tone in a positive way or is there no difference?
I've made a couple of pinecasters and never felt the need to grainfill. Just a couple of coats of sanding sealer does fine.
Keep up the great work.