Building two matching guitars

[Blazer]

Well once again I decided to get rid of stuff I have lying around and made an inventory of what I can use for a new build and came up with this.

- A Birdseye maple tele neck with a rosewood fingerboard
- A plain maple Strat neck with maple cap fingerboard
- A gold cover Humbucker from a Les Paul Custom
- A Dimarzio Super distortion humbucker
- Two chrome Fender style hard tail bridges, one toploading the other for string through body construction.
- Two sets of Cast sealed tuners, one for each neck.
-Two chrome humbucker rings.

So with that I decided to build two matching pine body Teles which if all goes well will look like this.



Tomorrow I'll start the building of both guitars and I'll take my camera along to capture the whole thing so there's eye candy ahead.

[allcree]

cool, can't wait to see the results, as a diehard gearhead i always say " don't let fear or common sense stand in your way"

[Blazer]

The first body still in the clamps, the glue has set over night


The second body in the clamps


Routing the first body


And here it is after the routing was done.


The second body during the routing


The two bodies


This will be the body for the tele neck


And that makes this one the one for the Strat neck


The body for the strat neck with the humbucker and the bridge giving the impression on how this one will look when finished.


After routing the neck pocket.

[sevser]

Why pine? You would think it would have very little resonance, being so soft...Hard not to strip screw holes too...I know you know what you’re doing, just curious about choice...besides the low cost (no cost) factor...

[Blazer]

Why pine? You would think it would have very little resonance, being so soft...Hard not to strip screw holes too...I know you know what you’re doing, just curious about choice...besides the low cost (no cost) factor...

I guess that was also the case when Joe Satriani insisted that Ibanez use Basswood for his signature model. Everybody declared him crazy, telling him that it was too soft to make a workable guitar from.

In the case of pine, it has historic refference.

A 1948 Fender Telecaster Prototype.
The first Fender guitars were made out of pine. And they have since gotten a cult status.

And Fender has now launched a Pine body tele in their Squier range.

The Classic vibe Pine body tele

And Pine is related to spruce and nobody questions the use of Spruce as a tonewood, being used on acoustic guitars for centuries.

[toejam]

Cool. Are you going to just oil it or put a stain and clear coat on it? There's some nasty looking streaks and knots in there.

[sevser]

...Well, there you have it. Just don't think of pine as a guitar wood.

Did they contuinue using pine after making the prototype? (Other than this recent "Squire" model)

I used to work in the logging industry for 10 years. The two may be related but...Physically spruce has far more density and is way harder than pine. can't see the two producing similar tone.

Looks good though...

[Grandturk]

I was just going to say "that looks like pine" then I read that it WAS pine... neat - I was thinking the same thing - soft.

Good luck - you have more woodworking skills than I do!

[skorb]

yeah those look good but would be way nicer with a better wood.

hell even basswood would be better than pine. and really, there was a reason Fender abandoned that wood from their prototypes, think about it.

plus the fact that a low end cheapie Squier now has a pine body isn't what I'd call the best recommendation. they use plywood on Squiers too, yo.

but hey, the bodies look like they were nicely routed and I love Teles.

[hippietim]

There are a lot of Tele guys really into pine. I was surprised too.

[Blazer]

Well it has been a while but I finally made some progress. I decided to drop the idea of using the necks I had lying around and instead opted to made the necks from scratch, also when talking to Jack T Ripper, our second guitarist, he asked me if it were possible to give the guitars 24 fret necks and I found no reason why it shouldn't be possible. It also makes that I have to give the guitars a Gibson 24, 1/5 scale length.


One of the necks while the glue sets


And here's the neck after the glue dried and I planed it. This particullar neck was made from rest pieces of other necks we made, it consists of three main pieces of Birds eye maple, two layers of rosewood veneer, two layers of maple veneer and two layers of lacewood veneer, the effect as you can tell is striking, this will be a KILLER neck.


As for work on the bodies, I finished routing the neck pockets....


...and started work on the routing of the electronics compartment.


And off we go....


Slow and steady wins the race


And routing a pocket to recess the backplate so it looks and feels smooth.


Finished


Time to whip out the grain filler.


For both bodies of course.


And here's how they look after the first sanding when the filler has set.


And from behind too of course

[asix]

my Warwick Streamer has a pine body.