I am still chasing my ideal guitar. This time I got a thinline telecaster body from Northwest Guitars which was routed for dual humbuckers. Though I had hoped that the routing would fit the fender wide range humbuckers I acquired, well it didn’t. I’m beginning to appreciate that unlike the ubiquitous stratocaster there are a whole bunch of different telecaster variants and what I probably should be looking for in order to house my wide range humbuckers is a deluxe thinline telecaster body.
Anyway I was delighted with the look of the natural wood thinline telecaster HH body so ordered some Seymour Duncan pickups. I wanted to keep experimenting and learning so I also ordered a push/pull pot. Push/pull pots are a combination of a regular pot and a switch. The switch lets you pull the knob up or down and depending how you wire the switch. The pot and the switch are separate mechanisms, it’s just that they share the same pole and knob.
Seymour Duncan’s site has wiring diagrams including the one that I needed.
In the above circuit, when the push/pull pot is pulled up, the wires from the humbuckers are connected to ground. Normally the two coils on the humbucker are connected in series so by shorting one of the two coils, you effectively get a single coil. I put the push/pull pot on the volume knob.
I had a Telecaster loaded control plate that I had got earlier so just swapped the volume pot for the push/pull pot.
The body and neck both needed some holes drilled since they don’t do all the holes because different people might use different hardware.
I had some old strap pins from an earlier project so just re-used those.
I also had a set of locking tuners in my spares box so fitted those.
I’m waiting for some chrome string ferrules to arrive. Once they arrive I will string the guitar, work out the final positions for the pickups and screw their plates in, and fit the string tree to the neck. But here’s how it’s looking so far.
Project Cost:
Thinline Telecaster Body – Humbucker – Natural Finish £157.50
Telecaster Guitar Neck – Rosewood, Satin Finish £99.17
Chunky Hardtail String Thru Bridge £14.37
Telecaster Guitar Neck Plate & Screws £4.16
250k Split Shaft Push/Pull Alpha Pot £4.99
Seymour Duncan SH2 Black JB Humbucker Neck Pickup £57.50
Seymour Duncan SH4 Black JB Humbucker Bridge Pickup £57.50
Flat metal Humbucker Pickup Surround Plate x 2 £8.32
Pair of Roller String Trees £2.91
Pre Wired Tele Guitar Control Plate £12.19
Dopro Chrome 2 pin locking tuners £28.99
Set of 6 chrome Telecaster body string ferrules £7.60
Total Project Cost £455.20
Robbie's Guitar Projects 