I saw this ivory telecaster thinline body on ebay and fell in love. Had to have it.
The 6 chrome string ferrules were supplied with the body.
First false start mainly caused by me not examining the screw holes carefully. I was influenced by my earlier telecaster build and didn’t spot a few things until after the bridge plate and pickguard plate arrived. With the benefit of hindsight I can see that the controls, and the two humbuckers should be mounted on the pickguard plate, and there is a very simple bridge. So back to ordering and I have some more spares for the box.
I’m learning more about the variety of telecaster bridges. The second bridge I got was a hardtail toploader. While this would work, it doesn’t have holes for the strings to come from the back so I ordered a hardtail string through bridge. Similarly this body has screws for a rectangular plated output jack rather than the simple round socket I used for the other telecaster.
The loaded telecaster control plate arrived but since I am using a thinline pickguard I will strip the knobs and electrics from it to load the pickguard plate.
I got a 21 fret curly maple neck from Amazon. Again the first set of tuners I ordered needs larger holes and I didnt want to mess with the neck so have ordered a second set of tuners that should fit the holes I have.
From my collection of spares I put a couple of locking strap pins onto the body.
The tuning pegs arrived so fitted those with a little filing of the holes first to let the ferrules fit in then some hand pin drilling of the holes.
The square output jack plate arrived so I stripped the electronics off the loaded control plate so I could fit the output jack to its plate and screw the plate in. The output jack needed a lug bent a bit to take it back enough to fit the recess. A ground wire has come loose from the 3 way switch and it’s a very basic 3 way rather than a proper Telecaster 3 way. Will solder that back on and will wire up one humbucker first to make sure I got the switch the correct way round. Meanwhile my humbuckers continue their global tour according to USPS tracking. For some reason they have gone from Hauppage to Jamaica to Newark so far.
So I got my humbuckers but alas this lovely body is routed for P90s not the larger humbuckers so those Fender wider range humbuckers are going to have to put aside for another project. I am still weighing up whether to get a body and neck or whether to get a squier HH and mod it.
Meanwhile I order a loaded pickguard from Voodoo Vibe where I got the body from. It arrived and so assembled things. The P90s attach to the body rather than the pickguard. The selector switch was interesting in that it has 8 lugs so had to use my multi meter to continuity test to work out how to solder it up. Turned out the lugs for the middle position of the switch were different from the other two positions so soldered lugs together to make all 3 switch positions work. It all came together though the neck felt a little rough on fret ends so have been filing and sanding those down. It’s turned out to be a nice guitar and I like the weight and sound of the semi hollow body. Had a little bother with the string tree screw so ended up swapping for another screw that does the job but didn’t chamfer so easily even after some trusty hand vice pin drilling.
I am waiting for the guitar strap to arrive but am tempted because this guitar has such a old timey look to it to treat it to one of the Fender vintage style straps. We will see.
Project Cost:
Ivory Thin Line Telecaster Body with free postage £84.99
21 fret curly maple neck £69.99
Wilkinson Vintage Kluson style tuners £22.50
Hard-tail string-thru bridge £14.48
Square guitar jack plate £3.90
Loaded pick guard with P90 soap bars £37.99
Roller string tree £3.79
Guitar strap £3.98
Total Project Cost £228.62
Robbie's Guitar Projects 