Finished my first personal guitar build

I've done a lot of builds for other people but up until last month, I had never completed a personal build.

I have a load of bodies and necks and various hardware, but usually not the time. 

I fell in love with a SpaltKing (look him up on ebay - some really good stuff) guitar body and paid a premium for it.  I also discovered how much I love maple burl tops. 

 Here are my completed pictures.  I'll get into the details of the guitar in a moment.  My pictures were taken with a crappy cell phone which does absolutely no justice to the details of the guitar.  As you can see by the two different pictures the color of the guitar isn't even consistent in the pictures.  I swear, the finish did not obscure the burl figure! 

I'll start from the neck down and detail the guitar a bit.  The neck came from a Japanese Fender Floral Telecaster RI.  I used the floral body to test a Bigsby (which I ended up not caring for) and needed to patch some holes from this process.  I loved the neck on the guitar though.  So I took the neck and the vintage style Gotoh tuners.  I left the nut as the original although in the future if I feel particularly motivated, I may change it over to brass as I prefer the brighter sounds of a brass nut over plastic (or whatever they call the material - which is just plastic).

The neck originally did not really fit the neck pocket.  It was a bit too tight.  About 1/16" too tight.  It doesn't sound like much, but with a Maple neck and a beautiful burl top that i had no interest in destroying forcing it to fit, it was a lot.  What I ultimately ended up doing was running the bolts into the back of the guitar and into the neck and using them to hold the neck in place above the pocket.

Then I clamped a straight piece of scrap up against the neck on the bass side since the treble side was clear over the pocket.  Otherwise, I'd have clamped a straight board alongside the neck on both the treble and bass side.  Then I took my router and used a bit with a bearing on the shank and carefully trimmed the pocket so that it was a hair wider.  The neck has an absolutely perfect tight fit now!

I'm glad I went with this option instead of using a different neck.  Again, I'm particularly fond of this Fender neck.

The body was my first attempt at French Polishing.  It isn't as difficult nor as exotic as it sounds.  Just read a few articles and take your time.  I should mention that before I began the French Polishing, I filled some of the voids in the figured top with super glue.  I let it dry and then sanding it smooth with 220 and 400 grit paper.

I could have done a better job sanding.  A lesson I will take with me for me next project.  The smell of the super glue when it is being sanded is awful and my suggestion is some sort of dust mask at the very least if you choose to go this very popular route.

I put a load of shellac on the top over the course of a couple of weeks.  The thing to know is that if you have to sand shellac, it clogs your paper very fast and it takes about 10 days or so in a normal room temperature to fully gas off all of the alcohol.  I learned that the hard way.

The finish felt hard to the touch but while French Polishing the back of the guitar, I had the front resting on my corduroy pants.  Needless to say, there were a load of corduroy lines running in my finish and I had to sand a lot of it back and refinish the top. 

I used a lot less shellac on the sides and back which are Honduran mahogany.  I didn't fill the grain which I really should have in retrospect.  I was a bit impatient is all. 

Another cool thing about shellac is that it is pretty well non toxic and can be applied indoors with no special ventilation. 

The bridge was the original Fender ash tray 3 saddle bridge from the floral Tele.  The pickups were a set of Electric City Black Scotch pickups that I acquired on a trade for a beat up Fender Tremolux cabinet. 

I didn't use a pickguard because I didn't want to obscure the top in any way.  I also ended up directly screwing the neck pickup into the body because I didn't have the correct hardware to make the metal pickup rings I had purchased work. 

That reminds me, GFS (Guitar Fetish) sells pickups rings as brass pickup rings.  They are NOT brass.  They are most definitely magnetic (which means they are almost definitely steel).  This will mostly have some effect on the sound of the pickups.  They are nice rings and for the money they cannot be beat, but they are NOT brass.  I didn't use them because of hardware issues though.  Not because they are not brass.  And I'm sure they will sound fine.  I just wanted to make anybody aware who was thinking about brass pickup rings from GFS that they are NOT brass!  Did I repeat myself enough here? 

The control plate is a Telecaster Plus style plate I picked up a few years back before the newer Mexican Telecaster Plus guitars came out.  The only difference is that they have a small hole in between the volume and tone control for a mini switch. 

I used the mini switch alongside of a 4 way switch.  The mini switch toggles the phase of the bridge pickup while the 4 way switch is wired for neck, neck-bridge series, neck-bridge parallel, bridge.


The series position is easily my favorite!  I love putting the pickups in and out of phase with it!  It is like going between rhythm and lead sounds without having to play with the pickup selector. 

One thing about the wiring was that you have to disconnect the ground connection from the bridge pickup to the baseplate of the pickup.  I went to unsolder the bridge ground connection and much to my surprise the solder blob just came off without any heat.  Only some pressure from a screw driver. 

When replacing the ground connection with a new one, you have to be fast and use a lot of heat.  The wax that holds the baseplate in place melts with the heat and the heat isn't good for the enamel wire either.  My connection wasn't pretty much it was definitely held down better than the original. 

This isn't to say that the Electric City pickups don't sound good or are of low quality.  I'm sure it never would have been a problem had I not decided on an alternate wiring.  I also suspect this may be why most baseplates are copper instead of zinc plated. 

The 4 way switch on the control plate gave me some issues as well.  The middle two positions were fine but the outer two positions didn't have enough clearance from the plate to make good reliable connections.  I am not sure if this is because the switch has a wider throw or because the control plate had too much chrome/tighter hole clearance for the switch. 

I took a dremel (which don't even get me started on how shitty Dremel products are.  I had a Black and Decker rotary tool that worked better and cost less than my newly purchased Dremel - ugh - what a piece of crap it is) and took the metal grinding attachment to the corners of the control plate.  It doesn't look pretty, but it works and most people really wouldn't notice it if I didn't say anything.  And given that I found the 4 way switch to be something I will never not use again, it was well worth it! 

I set the guitar up with 2/32 action at the 15th or 17th fret.  I don't recall which.  I know that the action is lower than I prefer and it doesn't buzz anywhere on the fretboard.  The pickups were set at 3/32" or so with the last fret depressed. 

The guitar sounds and plays really good!  I wish it were a bit brighter at times, but I think that is my lot with vintage Telecaster style pickups.  Bear in mind, the guitar I have been playing the most is a Strat with all sorts of upgrades to make it brighter.  I'm of the belief that you can always make it darker, but you can't always make it brighter.