My ideal single coil guitar

I have been anonymously perusing this site for at least 16 years, becoming inspired and a little more educated about any number of topics. Now, finally, it is time for me to submit some content of my own. I hope this is in the correct spot.

Like many of you, I own and have owned a bevy of guitars. I think I maxed out around a dozen. I find myself at a season of life where I am no longer interested in collecting every guitar on a list, rather, I am on the hunt for my own perfect guitars. I am going to try to limit myself to two electrics (one single coil, one humbucking), a bass, a mandolin and one or two acoustics.

This is my starting point. These are my three most favourite single coil guitars. I am going to try to take the best (in my opinion) features of each to make my perfect guitar.

So far the goal is...
Tele modern bridge and bridge p/u
P90 in the neck
Strat body shape (it’s just so comfy!)

I’ll document this process here.

 

I forgot what might be the most important part of the setup!

in addition to:
Tele modern bridge and bridge p/u
P90 in the neck
Strat body shape

It must have a telecaster neck! I once read an interview of Jim Campilongo where he refers to a tele neck as similar to “an old lady’s wrist”. It’s a weird visual, but it’s a feeling that I love.

And yes, so far I am uncertain about the controls.

 

I have spent a long time trying to figure out how to fill in the trem route of a strat in order to use a telecaster bridge. I’d still like to nail that someday and I had a false start on a strat-like hardtail body a while back. Now I’ve got a nasty old plywood bullet strat that someone made a huge mess of. I cleaned up the awful swimming pool route that he did (possibly with a chisel?) as a proof of concept.

 

I had to add a block to the nasty swimming pool to bring the neck pickup up a bit and just to get a little more bulk in the plywood. I had a chunk of old ash that fit the bill. It isn’t pretty, but for a proof-of-concept it’ll work.

 

I’ve put in a little more work today. I have ferrules in for the string-through. The holes were perfectly straight with a drill press, but my ferrule cavities got a little iffy. My bridge pickup holes were offset from the bridge holes! I tried to drill that out better but wound up drilling through the pickup plate too. Argh!

 

Holy crap! I wish I had known these little babies exist, and for only $20!?!? That’s amazing. I would have built this guitar years ago instead of waiting for so long to find a Hardtail. And I wouldn’t have used a nasty old plywood-caster either.