Carl.B Posted March 20, 2020 Posted March 20, 2020 So with all this free time I now have, and Bub's telecaster build I am thinking of building my own guitar. The only thing for certain it will have to have at least 1 P-90. I am leaning towards a kit guitar from https://precisionguitarkits.com/ sorry I don't remember who it was from the HFC that did a double cutaway from them and it looked great. Or do I go with Warmoth, Musikraft, or another part's company? Would love to hear why you chose what you used in your builds too. Any help and recommendations appreciated. Thanks Carl.B
velorush Posted March 20, 2020 Posted March 20, 2020 I nabbed someone else's "lost interest" partscaster project, sold off the parts I didn't care for and used the proceeds to fashion something I was interested in playing. The starting point was a Gilmour Black Strat clone. The builder had (oddly) stripped the (original) black paint from the American Special (SSH) body. I sold the '57 Vintage Reissue neck and tuners. I still have the prescribed Gilmour pickup set (I was surprised that I do like that hot Duncan bridge pickup). (Sorry, that's the best available photo since purging Photobucket). I then had Terrapin Guitars build a custom pickguard, bought a TV Jones template and had at it! Then, a quick test:
velorush Posted March 20, 2020 Posted March 20, 2020 After wiring up my Gibson with too many choices, I knew I wanted this to be absolutely simple. No push / pulls, no mini-switches, just five solid pickup choices. Bridge Bridge-Middle Bridge-Neck Neck-Middle Neck Switching was facilitated with a Super Switch (the two-group variant). Not being overly familiar with TV Jones, I went with a single 0.022 cap on the first tone control (second regulated to a "talent" knob that would remain on 10). In process: The 0.022 seemed a little dark to me, so I rewired it with a double-wafer Super Switch to facilitate the pickup choices and cap choices. So the bridge position uses the 0.022 capacitor and the remaining positions use the 0.015 capacitor (a spare from rewiring my '80 Hamer Special around eight years ago). Oh, and that treble bleed circuit was from TV Jones - works great with their pickups. So now it's wired up and sounds really nice. The neck is the Fender-licensed "Fat" neck from AllParts (1" thick nut to 12th fret). I'm just waiting on some warm weather to disassemble / paint / reassemble. The color was the subject of an ad infinitum thread a couple of years back. I'm still waffling between translucent white (aka Mary Kaye) and Sherwood green. An interesting additional choice I was considering (and to which the wife rolled the eyes strongly) was to paint it translucent white and then checkerboard it with Sherwood green. I can see that. Also planning to have a custom decal made at some point. Oh, and it now has Fender Tele-style knurled knobs on it. I have an interesting custom headstock decal in mind. Any suggestions on a place to get that done? And thanks for the indulgence. Kind of slow here at work...
cmatthes Posted March 21, 2020 Posted March 21, 2020 TV Jones 'Trons are PERFECT in Strats and Teles. I've been knocking out a number of projects here and there and will be selling off the stuff that doesn't make the cut, but so much fun to mess around with and the Musikraft stuff is out of this world great.
Toadroller Posted March 21, 2020 Posted March 21, 2020 Nice job painting! Air-compressor driven or rattle can?
Travis Posted March 21, 2020 Posted March 21, 2020 50 minutes ago, gtone said: Love it! More details, please...
gtone Posted March 21, 2020 Posted March 21, 2020 Just now, Travis said: Love it! More details, please... Fast Guitars did the CNC on the body/neck, both in African mahogany. Neck is a '50's profile baseball bat with ebony fretboard and medium jumbo frets. Hardware: Emerson Pro pots, Gotoh strip tuning machines, SwitchCraft jack, MojoTone lightning bar bridge, bone nut, Sanford Electronics 9022 P-90 (A2 mag), 50's Black Beauty tone cap. Finish: 12 coats of Tru-Oil over aniline dye. Plays and sounds much better than it looks too...
Travis Posted March 21, 2020 Posted March 21, 2020 3 minutes ago, gtone said: Fast Guitars did the CNC on the body/neck, both in African mahogany. Neck is a '50's profile baseball bat with ebony fretboard and medium jumbo frets. Hardware: Emerson Pro pots, Gotoh strip tuning machines, SwitchCraft jack, MojoTone lightning bar bridge, bone nut, Sanford Electronics 9022 P-90 (A2 mag), 50's Black Beauty tone cap. Finish: 12 coats of Tru-Oil over aniline dye. Plays and sounds much better than it looks too... You had me at “baseball bat”....
geoff_hartwell Posted March 22, 2020 Posted March 22, 2020 I made a Carvin Bolt kit that I upgraded with EMGs and a Mike Christian Piezo bridge for a Pink Floyd project long ago. My first foray into what would become an obsession with Duotones, haha! The wood and hardware were great, and I had a good time finishing and sanding it, etc. I don’t know if it counts, but I have three guitars that I put Warmoth conversion necks on- a perfect drop-in replacement and the scale is magically 24 3/4, game changer for strats and Teles, for me. I did a Tele 69 thin line reissue with Joe Barden Danny Gatton pups and it screams. I did another Gilmour Black Strat with a black Clapton body to accommodate the mid boost kit, and Dimarzio Area pups. And finally a Chrome Red Fender body with the EMG DG pickguard (pups, exg, and mid boost on board) for the later period Floyd stuff. The Black and red Gilmours are at my studio, but the Carvin and the Tele are home with me. If I get a chance I’ll post a pic for shits and giggles. 😆
Ua D Posted March 22, 2020 Posted March 22, 2020 Precision guitar kit I did 2 years ago. Still rock it daily. A really nice guitar. Lightest I own, despite a maple neck. It is thin though, just right for me. African mahogany with maple top. 30 or so coats of tru oil on the maple cap. Ebony board on maple neck. The most sustain and rings louder unplugged than any guitar I’ve ever owned, including the ultimate junior I bought this year. I would like to do another but it looks like I’m going to only be building depression style instruments for awhile. I built this ghetto lap steel today while on quarantine with parts I had laying around
Ua D Posted March 22, 2020 Posted March 22, 2020 Also I put together a partscaster using a warmoth ash body with a 24.75 scale neck from USACG. I Had warmoth paint the body and I did the neck. Cool guitar. It didn’t do anything more than my other strat did, besides look cool.
Ua D Posted March 24, 2020 Posted March 24, 2020 On 3/20/2020 at 12:20 PM, Carl.B said: So with all this free time I now have, and Bub's telecaster build I am thinking of building my own guitar. The only thing for certain it will have to have at least 1 P-90. I am leaning towards a kit guitar from https://precisionguitarkits.com/ sorry I don't remember who it was from the HFC that did a double cutaway from them and it looked great. Or do I go with Warmoth, Musikraft, or another part's company? Would love to hear why you chose what you used in your builds too. Any help and recommendations appreciated. Thanks Carl.B So any decisions yet? I would say the precision guitar kit would be awesome. I actually want to start an explorer build but I’m on financial lockdown. I wish I could convince them to offer the double cut with the neck further in the body like a Hamer instead of a Gibson jr. Balances better. I would ask for for a light neck if you go for the dc. Mine has a skinny maple neck and I had to take off the schallers I originally built it with. I replaced them with some kluson style grovers that were a lot lighter so it wasn’t so prone to neck dive. Of course this might be because the body is so damn light on mine. The whole guitar weighs 6.8 lbs which is surprising for a solid body. Also as far as I understand, Fast Guitar Kits are the same company as Precision guitar kits.
gtone Posted March 24, 2020 Posted March 24, 2020 44 minutes ago, Ua D said: Also as far as I understand, Fast Guitar Kits are the same company as Precision guitar kits. Fast Guitars was originally a spin-off of Precision Guitars where they both once partners in the latter. Fast set up in the same building as Precision and they both shared the CNC setup but split up and eventually sourced separate wood stocks. As time went on, Fast Guitars drifted away from building custom kits to only taking orders for in-house builds. At first, they used virtually the same designs, but Fast developed some proprietary designs and mostly custom manufactures those now IIRC; ergo, no more bodys/necks from Fast... Some, if not all, of San Francisco's Rock'N'Roll Relic Guitars were pre-fabbed by Precision and you can tell that their basic Thunders model DC Jr is virtually the same as mine save one minor detail on the headstock shape and a multi-ply guard (I have a 50's carve thick neck, ebony board and vintage BB cap to my guit's credit). Their relic'd Thunders model list price is US$2,400 while my build cost less than US$400.
Carl.B Posted March 24, 2020 Author Posted March 24, 2020 1 hour ago, Ua D said: So any decisions yet? I would say the precision guitar kit would be awesome. I actually want to start an explorer build but I’m on financial lockdown. I wish I could convince them to offer the double cut with the neck further in the body like a Hamer instead of a Gibson jr. Balances better. I would ask for for a light neck if you go for the dc. Mine has a skinny maple neck and I had to take off the schallers I originally built it with. I replaced them with some kluson style grovers that were a lot lighter so it wasn’t so prone to neck dive. Of course this might be because the body is so damn light on mine. The whole guitar weighs 6.8 lbs which is surprising for a solid body. Also as far as I understand, Fast Guitar Kits are the same company as Precision guitar kits. It's either a Tele P-90 in the neck or the Explorer with P-90's. Just started a email chain with them on some options I am thinking about.
Ua D Posted March 24, 2020 Posted March 24, 2020 p90s will be dope. Once I recover from the upcoming economic disaster I’d love to build a tele with a humbucker bridge/p90 middle/p90 neck. Blue flame maple top. Inspired by this guitar. I forgot who sold this (sorry for using your picture without permission😬) but I loved it even in its pizza day glory wish I had bought it
gtone Posted March 24, 2020 Posted March 24, 2020 If you go with Precision, their '59 neck carve feels perfect, a great compromise between the 50's and 60's carves (thanks for that, Capt. Obvious!). Anyhoo, that's what I have on my Explorer Jr. and I could play that sucker for hours and still feel cramp-free. Matter of fact, I used it and my SG Special for an outdoor birthday party gig that ran from 7pm - 1:30am and was having such a good time, I didn't want to quit! During a break, a guitar playing buddy asked to have a look at it and needless to say, I had to wrestle it back from him and his friends to play the next set. 😎 FWIW, if I had to do it all over with Precision, I'd probably opt for African mahogany over Korina/Limba as Phil couldn't source any larger pieces of Korina in order to make a one or even two piece body. At least he couldn't back in 2015 when I built mine, but I doubt he's stumbled on much more Korina all of a sudden; one never knows, however... Good luck with your design/build and keep us posted!
cynic Posted March 24, 2020 Posted March 24, 2020 I wired the pickups and switching for this yesterday. Pickups are Zexcoils (Vintage Single 5's in the neck/middle with a Juicy Bucker in the bridge). I used a Fender S-1 switch for the volume pot and wired it to activate the neck in any position when engaged. Pickguard is matte black thick single ply, body is KNE swamp ash hardtail, neck is Musikraft. I had CHS Guitars spray a matte black (he calls it chalk?) finish with matching headstock that turned out pretty cool. The bare areas of the neck have been sealed but I think I'll do something to make it a little more amber. I'll probably use a shellac to get the color I want followed by tru-oil. Frankenstein strats are cool, but Young Frankenstein is a way better movie. Other than finishing the neck, the only decision left to be made is the bridge. Choices are a traditional hardtail bridge using a Callaham plate with Highwood saddles: or a Callaham w/ tele-style compensated saddles:
Travis Posted March 24, 2020 Posted March 24, 2020 18 minutes ago, cynic said: Ha! “Frau Blücher” that’s awesome!
kizanski Posted March 24, 2020 Posted March 24, 2020 5 minutes ago, Travis said: Ha! “Frau Blücher” that’s awesome! Agreed! F-ing brilliant!
Rich_S Posted March 24, 2020 Posted March 24, 2020 My partscaster build is in the April print issue of Premier Guitar. Pretty much all of it was used parts purchased from forums or eBay: MIK Schecter body, MIM Fender neck, Duncan '59 pickups. I had to buy a few parts new: Gotoh bridge, chrome pickup ring, gold knobs, Switchcraft and CTS electronics. https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/30078-reader-guitar-of-the-month-townshend-tribute
RobB Posted March 24, 2020 Posted March 24, 2020 15 hours ago, gtone said: Their relic'd Thunders model list price is US$2,400 while my build cost less than US$400. You should design a logo and sell your Jr. for $900/shipped. Boom-your own guitar company. It's GOLD, Jerry!
scottcald Posted March 24, 2020 Posted March 24, 2020 4 hours ago, cynic said: or a Callaham w/ tele-style compensated saddles: I like the look of those pickups and I think the Tele style bridge is the winner, but then again, I hate the bent steel Strat saddles.
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