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Thread: Guess I'll be building a tele

  1. #1
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    Guess I'll be building a tele

    I just bought off of Ebay a complete 1952 Fender custom shop pickguard with pickups and all wiring. I have been teaching a guy who has a Mexican Fender tele. I must say,it's not bad. I'm wondering if the Mexican Fenders have exactly the same pickups as the American made ones. It sure sounds nice through my Standel amp.

    So,I've been thinking about making up a tele. The 1952 outfit will be a good starting point. I plan to use an ash or curly maple body. Probably the ash with butterscotch color finish. Nothing fancy about it,just a straight forward tele. I used to have a 1952 reissue,and traded it off for some reason. In fact,in the 60's I had a real 1952. If only we had magical forward vision!
    Last edited by george wilson; 12-17-2015 at 10:29 AM.

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    Excellent! Will look forward to watching the progress.
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  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Christopher Charles View Post
    Excellent! Will look forward to watching the progress.
    ^^^^^^^^ +1
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    Quote Originally Posted by george wilson View Post
    I just bought off of Ebay a complete 1952 Fender custom shop pickguard with pickups and all wiring. I have been teaching a guy who has a Mexican Fender tele. I must say,it's not bad. I'm wondering if the Mexican Fenders have exactly the same pickups as the American made ones. It sure sounds nice through my Standel amp.
    My old Mexican Strat sounded pretty great. I haven't touched it in awhile, but it never left me wanting as far as single coils go--until one of the knobs went spotty after 10+ years and I had to fix the setup while teaching myself to solder. (The burns, George. Oh the burns.) From my limited research and spotty memory, the Mexican Fenders are way superior compared with other non-US-made ones.

    My takeaway: George, build your Tele while traveling abroad and screw with everyone's heads and biases.

  6. #6
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    Yes,the BURNS!!!! I was making that art deco jewelry box for my wife years ago. Soldering the stained glass pieces together via the copper strips you put between the pieces. I was concentrating on the glass pieces,when I picked up my 30 watt soldering iron by the HOT end!!! Instant frying sound and white hot feeling pain!!


    This is not going to be any build to get excited about. I just decided I want a Tele to test my Standel amp with. Buddy Merill(or is it Merril?) got the most fantastic tonality when playing with the Lawrence Welk orchestra in the 50's. I now have one of those amps. Only 50 were ever made. Every great guitarist had one though. Buddy lost his in a flood,and apparently never got the chance to get another. His playing then sounded very ordinary.

    There is a very nice guy in California who bought the rights to the company,and is making exact repros of those amps. Right down to finding 15" JBL speakers from that era. I bought one. They run about $3500.00,so not cheap. Since I must have had 25 different amps over the years,i had to try one. The quality of the new Standels is GREAT-right down to the hospital quality plug(It in itself is certainly worth looking at)!! The 15" JBL's have the aluminum dome center,which acts like a tweeter. He has to pay over $400.00 each on average for those original 1950's JBL's. Mine is exactly mint in condition.

    So,in reality,I'm experimenting with tonality rather than just the goal of making another guitar. The Tele is about as simple a guitar as you can make,after all. Buddy somehow always got that tonality even though he played a Strat,a Tele,and a Jazz Master. There is,in reality,no telling what Buddy or a technician did to make that sound,but I'd like to try to recapture it. I'll leave out the corny Lawrence Welk part!!

    You can catch his sound by listening to his youtube recordings,which date from the 50's.

    By the way: Do you know that the original Fender guitars were fretted by forcefully pushing the frets in from the SIDE? They were pushed in by a guy who just did that all day. He used a special press he made up.He got them in at full depth,smack dab right down tight on the wood! Why? They rightfully felt that the teeth on the tangs would not easily come loose!! When the guy got too old,Fender correctly decided that this skill was too much to expect any replacement to learn.
    Last edited by george wilson; 12-17-2015 at 11:02 AM.

  7. #7
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    Well,I have gotten a new,USA made Fender 1952 custom shop black bakelite pick guard with all pickups and electronics. Now,after the weekend,I'll order the rest of the stuff from Stewart MacDonald. There are plenty of sources of parts for Teles,but,to tell the truth,I don't trust the quality of many of them. I'll pay a bit more and go with Stew Mac. This is going to be very much an "assembly of parts" rather than a scratch build. My goal is not to do what I used to do way back in the 50's,and scratch build Fender style guitars (I could not find out how to bend sides for acoustics at that time). I want a Tele to experiment with,sooner rather than later. Without a lot of tinkering around.

    The pickups for the best Teles Fender now makes are not hand wound in a random pattern like the originals. The magnet wires are very evenly laid down. That apparently affects the tonality. There is a guy in California who hand winds pickups for a few hundred. I'm tempted to cut out the windings and hand wind myself. I used to do that myself using a drill press,and someone to start and stop it(!) I made pickups for students in several shop classes back when I was teaching in the 60's They were mostly too poor to buy commercial pickups. .But,I'll see how this project turns out. Hand winding may not be the only answer to getting an original 1950's sound from my Standel amp.

    Back then,the components of amps were muck more loosely made in terms of accurate specifications. Capacitors were not as exact as ours today. Even though my Standel is an exact copy of the originals,it uses modern,more accurately made components-capacitors,resistors,etc.. So,there may be an obstacle right there to achieving the Buddy Merrill tone that I'm after. I'm thinking his tone came mostly from the Standel amp anyway,because he played a Tele,a Strat,and a Jazz Master and always got that SAME EXACT tone!!!
    Last edited by george wilson; 12-26-2015 at 10:15 AM.

  8. #8
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    I rewired a Mexican Tele and installed a 5 way switch. It adds a series/out of phase wiring that has an interesting quacky or wah sound. I also shielded the pickup cavities and the back of the pickguard and potted the OEM pickups.Previously the guitar had an electrostatic discharge problem on the pickguard. I would strum for a short time then get a PoP in the amp and finally realized it was charge building up on the OEM plastic pickguard. In case you don't know about it there is a much better machined jack mounting piece available to replace the cheap stamped one. I also added a separate tone control so now the guitar has three knobs and the switch plate is inverted to put the switch at the other end.
    My only regret is that I put a Bigsby on this guitar. I don't play with one but got a new one cheap from a local music store that was clearing them out. It looks really cool but I liked the guitar better before this mod.
    Have fun with your project.
    Chris

  9. #9
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    Chris,I am trying to understand what all you mean. I have never had a static discharge on an electric. I used to build Fender type guitars when I was a teenager,as there was no information available on how to bend sides for making acoustics(which is really what I WANTED to do!). So,for many years now,I built only acoustic guitars,especially classical and flamenco guitars. In 1967 Sabicas,the World's greatest flamenco guitarist accepted a guitar from me.

    More recently,I made my Gretsch copy,just before the foreign made Gretsches came out(Their necks are all TOO SMALL in width,except for a certain Country Gentleman which has a wider neck,for some reason). I also made the 1950's Gibson style guitar with sunburst finish,and a carved arch Super 400 size arch top which I have put a Johnny Smith Gibson small pickup on the end of its fingerboard. Removed it as it is a better acoustic than electric guitar.

    So,this return to making Fender style Teles is rather a lark. Guess I'm chasing my youth. I ordered copper shielding tape. Perhaps I should have gotten the shielding paint. Same price,probably a lot easier to apply to the cavities on the guitar!

    My 1952 Fender pickguard assembly is bakelite. I don't now if that will affect static discharge. We'll have to see.

    I'm aware of the machined jack mounting piece(which I could easily make with my lathes,and nickel plate. I ordered the more authentic one. We'll see how it works out.

    Are you guys aware that the original bridge surrounding guard plates were HARDENED? I'm sure that affects the tone. Why Leo did this I don't know. He was not a guitar maker but an engineer. Maybe he thought that hardening the steel surround would help keep it from bending under string tension?

    By the way,the black pickups on the sunburst guitar are not P-90's. They are P-100's. A P-100 is 2 P-90's stacked one on the other,with windings going in opposite directions,so it becomes a humbucker. When I first got them,the pickups were huge,and I thought they could not sound good,being so large. I was wrong! They sound GREAT!!!! They take away the "Wildness" of the P-90,but still have that great P-90 sound. I fully recommend them. My favorite pickups are the Gretsch Filtertrons,though. The ones on the orange guitar are old ones I bought used. I don't know how similar the new ones made in Japan are in tone,or the TV Jones,either. Haven't tried those. I just wanted a Chet style guitar for my own use,without paying $10,000.00 dollars for an original at the time!

    My Gretsch was not made to deceive: It has an ebony fingerboard(originals used rosewood). The scale is longer,and there is no label inside saying Gretsch,and no serial numbers stamped on the back of the peghead. And,there is no wooden "bridge" under the bridge,as the 6120 had. I had an early Gretsch with that bridge,and it made the guitar sound too hard to my ears. This is the electric I always go back to. It is just perfect as far as my ears are concerned. But a knowledgeable collector would not take it as an original.
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    Last edited by george wilson; 01-02-2016 at 10:12 AM.

  10. #10
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    This reminds me of a friend many years ago who bought a set of bass tuners, and then decided since he had a set of tuners he better build a guitar for them. Enjoy your build George, it sounds like you are having fun with it already. I am building a ukulele for someone on sort of a similar lark.

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by george wilson View Post
    My 1952 Fender pickguard assembly is bakelite. I don't now if that will affect static discharge. We'll have to see.
    I think you already know this, but Phenolic (aka bakelite) is a very good insulator. It shouldn't be possible to discharge through that.

  12. #12
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    George, the static discharge problem I had was because the OEM plastic pickguard had what is called triboelectric properties
    that allowed charge to build up on it, probably from the action of my strumming. Once the charge built up high enough it discharged to ground somewhere, possibly the cover on the lipstick pickup which is grounded. The small arc that was produced when that happened was easily picked up by the pickups resulting in a small but audible pop in the amp. The funny thing was that I had no experience working on guitars up to that time but I suspected what it was from working on similar problems in my engineering career. I mention it to you only as a curiosity I encountered on a Tele rebuild.
    It's a rare problem that is totally dependent on the material. Your bakelite pickguard even ungrounded will probably not do it and I have only met a couple of guitar players/luthiers that have heard about this rarely happening. I put the self adhesive foil from StewMac on the back side of the pickguard and grounded it and the problem immediately disappeared.
    For the cavities I used both conductive paint and copper foil. The foil is nice for neatly interconnecting cavities and you can paint the conductive paint right over it to create a continuous ground plane. I put the large piece of foil on the pickguard primarily for my esd problem but it's probably helpful to reduce noise pickup too.
    Chris

  13. #13
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    I don't share your appreciation of the P-100's. To me they take away what was unique about the P-90's without any benefit. Performance hum problems have severely diminished as fluorescent balasts disappear. Despite the rep of P90's being "one trick ponies," they can be pretty versatile between a growl (bridge pickup on a sturated power tube section), the "woman tone" (neck pick-up with tone rolled off), and the brittle sound on a clean class A at lower volume. I can appreciate both the Filertrons and Hilotrons on the gretschs.
    Shawn

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  14. #14
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    I only play clean,Shawn. So I wouldn't know about their abilities for distortion. The Filtertrons are my favorite pickup. You know that the Hilotrons consist of 1/2 (one coil only) of a Filtertron? They sound very bright,which I am sometimes in the mood for.

    Yes,my 1952 pickguard is bakelite,and I am to get another one,it seems,from a friend. Not that I'm going to start a Tele factory,but I might build another using some very nice wood I have: For example I have a plank of curly mahogany wide enough to build a 1 piece Tele body.

    I need to correct an error I made above: The only piece of hardware I failed to order was the connector cup. After looking at how the originals worked,it is obvious that they are of inferior design. No wonder they come loose. I ordered a machined one that attaches with screws. I could make one,but don't feel like dragging out my plating outfit,and getting that nasty taste of nickel in my mouth no matter how clean I work,nitrile gloves and all! The cost was so low too. Not worth what my brass would cost. It's rather depressing that I can buy Tele stuff cheaper than I can make it from scratch!!

    And,you can buy very realistic looking pearl and abalone peghead decals for Gibson style pegheads. THAT,I really don't like! You are aware that way back in the 60's Gibson made a classical guitar with a DECAL ROSETTE,and an unfinished neck? The unfinished neck caused much complaint,but I never heard anyone ever mention the fake rosette. The guitar I saw had not had the decal perfectly trimmed to lie up against the fingerboard.
    I also saw a Humming Bird with unsanded planer cuts on its back!! Of course,you can also see much OLDER Martin guitars with circular saw cuts all over their Brazilian rosewood backs. It is considered FIGURE!!!

    I wish Stewart Macdonald's necks did not have that nearly invisible coat of poly on them. Nitrocellulose lacquer won't stick to it,and I have never wanted to use poly as a finish. Too lifeless looking. Yes,you can shellac over the poly,then apply lacquer,but I don't trust doing that. Sooner or later I'll start seeing flakes come loose. So,I'll have to sand the poly off,scraping carefully between frets with a thin violin scraper,and sanding afterwards. I see that I need to rasp away some extra wood where the back of the neck meets the peghead. It has too much wood left there,which will be in the way when playing chords in that area. Otherwise,the neck is very neatly made,with the frets perfectly against the fingerboard. They need a minuscule amount of filing on their ends,where a teeny bit of shrinkage has occurred in the wood. No problem.

    Though the neck has a walnut(looking) skunk stripe,it does not have the authentic truss rod. Instead,the truss rod is accessed at the peghead end. Easier,I realize(how many repeated times did I have to remove necks in the 50's to get the truss rod just right?) But,I'd like the more authentic truss rod better. Guess I'll have to build my own necks to get them correct. But,this first,quick Tele will serve its purpose to play around with the Standel. That's going to be its only use,really. If I ever tried to sell it,I'd have averaged about 25 cents an hour for labor,with what I have in it for parts!

    I see that Stewart Macd. is selling the very same brand parts that are all over Ebay. Next time I might buy from Ebay and save a bit of money.
    Last edited by george wilson; 01-04-2016 at 10:19 AM.

  15. #15
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    How did the tele turn out George?
    “I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” ~ Albert Einstein

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