Guitar Players: Show us yours!

Rat Rod Bikes Bicycle Forum

Help Support Rat Rod Bikes Bicycle Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Is that Squire neck maple? My buddy has a USA made Strat with the Birdseye neck, I LOVE the action on it!
They're both Maple, just different tints. I've got a few Maple neck guitars, they're quite nice.
15889555004645782223521443247276.jpg
 
Slapped a cool upgrade on my #1 these saddles are made of the same artificial bone material that the nut is.
IMG_20200513_154810_346.jpg


Seems to have smoothed out the tone some, looks cool, bone colored.
It's hard to tell in the picture.

GuitarlCarl.
 
here's a couple that are stock and are still great fun. The Telecaster Deluxe is a '74 and was my Grandfather's and the Jazzmaster is a Squier J. Mascis and comes with his own mods to the instrument (although I did add a rooster sticker to the headstock). I really love them both just as they are.
IMG_20200514_154921702.jpg


GC.
 
Telemaster? Jazzcaster? :grin:
I like Jazzcaster better but most folks call them Telemasters...
This one sounds amazing as I'd hoped it would. The cedar is so resonant I also wired it using the 4 way schematic, eliminating the parallel (normal both pickups) position and opting for the series wired with a 3 way switch. Takes it out of order but I can get used to the Bridge on position 1, Neck on 2, and Series on 3. I also used pickups from different manufacturers. The Bridge is an alnico 5 pulled out of a Turser Tele and the Neck pup is a Squier ceramic and I believe they are out of phase with each other. The series wired sound is really spanky, more than I expected. I may flip the neck wires around once just to see.

GuitarlCarl.
 
Mint green pickguard, Fender vintage slotted tuners and a lefty bridge to move the treble side of the pickup away for less harshness (see Jimi Hendrix) also one of the rare times I like the old tophat switch tip better, on a flipped control plate that puts my vol knob first. (I do this to a lot of my Teles)

[
IMG_20200521_135349839.jpg
IMG_20200521_135301358.jpg
IMG_20200521_135236130.jpg
IMG_20200520_213407_461.jpg

Strung up as a top loader too, the ferules for the back hadn't showed up yet and I wanted to play it. The Wilkinson bridge has both string thru and top loader options, you know they came the next day. But it'll wait, I'll play it for a month and then it's time for new strings anyway. Ido love the finish on this one. #nomoonlasers built the body, stained and shot nitro on it. It came to me kinda satin but kinda shiny in places, so I scruffy buffed it out by hand, to a nice smooth satin. Recycled cedar deck boards, looks better in person.

GC.
 
Last edited:
In the past, I'd made a diddly-bow out of 2x4s and some baling wire. But I like rhythm guitars, so I had an idea that I thought might work. I bought a used First Act guitar for $15, cut all the strings but the E, and turned the pickup sideways, cutting a sheet of plastic to give it a nice finished look.

I thought that orientated that way, when I plucked the string, the pickup would make it sound like 6 strings being played. I guess I thought each of those little contacts would act as a pickup sensor? In any case, for you real players and builders, you already know, it didn't work. I just sounds like one string, still. So, I have a $15 electric diddly-bow.
IMG_9113.JPG

IMG_9117.JPG
 
In the past, I'd made a diddly-bow out of 2x4s and some baling wire. But I like rhythm guitars, so I had an idea that I thought might work. I bought a used First Act guitar for $15, cut all the strings but the E, and turned the pickup sideways, cutting a sheet of plastic to give it a nice finished look.

I thought that orientated that way, when I plucked the string, the pickup would make it sound like 6 strings being played. I guess I thought each of those little contacts would act as a pickup sensor? In any case, for you real players and builders, you already know, it didn't work. I just sounds like one string, still. So, I have a $15 electric diddly-bow.
View attachment 125418
View attachment 125419
One string makes me instantly think Whamola

 
I'm just underway with a guitar build. I see now this might not be the best place for it, but if there is interest in following / contributing ideas, maybe I will start a build thread for it. Would that go in Other Builds? Anyway...

Back in 2003 when I was in Musical Stringed Instrument Repair degree program , there was a program for guitar repair and building as well. I didn't take part in the guitar school, but wandered through their adjacent shop many times in the last quarter when the guitar building was in session. (we shared the same tool room, so it was pretty handy) I got inspired, and ended up building my own Telecaster style guitar. I used a stock neck and built my solid body out of Peruvian Black Walnut, very dense, and a good amount of acoustic attack that comes off the face, with a ton of sustain. I put a humbucker in the neck position, and ran the wires straight to the jack, without any controls in between. I used my pedals and amp to shape the sound.

It works quite well, and gets a lot of looks at gigs and jam sessions. Here's a shot of me playing it at an Arizona open mic.
Tel-Lee closeup.jpg


Because of the nature of the wood, it's almost as hard as ebony, it chipped a lot during the body shaping process. Hence, the shortened 'thumb' on the Tel-Lee. I had to use two slabs of the walnut and glue them together, and still came up about 1/8" less than the standard 1 3/4 " deep Telecaster body. So, it's kind of an odd guitar, looks wise, but has a unique and pleasing sound.

This past week, I started building what I'm calling Tel-Lee Barncaster. In repairing some of our eaves / soffits from woodpecker and critter damage (it's a cedar sided house) I ran across a stash of lumber that was saved in the crawl space basement from the original build in 1988. Two boards, 2 x 6, one 41 " long and the other 30" long, make up the body. They are a little over 1 1/2" thick, so that left me some room for planing them and getting the body pretty flat.

I also have always wanted a chambered body Telecaster, so this Barncaster will be chambered as well. I haven't decided on the top cap for sure yet, but probably nothing fancy, just a 1/4" panel of veneer of some kind of wood; pine, oak, cherry, etc. And finally, I want to incorporate a piezo pick up in the bridge , with a stereo jack out so the magnetic pu's will be through one channel / amp and the piezo out through another to the P.A. or acoustic amp.

Here are some photos of my work so far. Comments , jokes, insights are welcomed!
110313263_594355561466173_5756750052542683232_n.jpg
110237922_617449615637351_7923153024845408464_n.jpg
110628296_289442055722351_3091320671393512199_n.jpg
111373788_3093120404102690_6238206802574619347_n.jpg
111358362_623342148305287_9110054528339178340_n.jpg

111328383_1169518766765467_347782119008903147_n.jpg
110956962_793325364807984_6659084679685462886_n.jpg
115805891_280827913201615_6156649145013327541_n.jpg
 
Got some more work done on it, fired up the router and started hollowing out the chambers. Lots of sawdust on a 90 degree day with 76% humidity. Will finish up the chambers tomorrow before the heat sets in.
115794056_316659356154914_4494362435545079558_n.jpg
 
Final update on the Swender Barncaster aka Tel-Lee. I used a combination of Gunstock and Chestnut Brown Minwax stains, and then about 8 or 9 coats of Zinsser Amber Shellac on the body. The first result was kind of 'furniture from the '60s looking', so I took it out to the BACK40 spray booth and added a black burst to the outline of the body. Then blended it in to take away the hard edge of the flat black primer, and layered more shellac over the top.

The neck got the shellac on the head stock and fret board, while I left the back of the neck super smooth sanded and shaped to my liking, and then used Antiqwax and some 3000 grit Abralon sanding pads to get it super smooth. The shellac gives it a nice hue of yellow aging (doesn't show up nearly as well in the photos below) without looking like a maple stained neck. All the hardware either came 'relic' ( control panel, bridge, knobs ) or I used my 'aging promoter' solution to get a relic look ( strap buttons, tuners and peg hole bushings, output jack, ...'t screws , etc)

We installed a 4 way switch in the Lindy Fralin wiring configuration. That gives the middle position of neck / bridge pu combo an extra boost and full sound. The warm neck pu I put in is good enough for jazzy tones, and the middle without the boost is perfect for finger picking or flat picking acoustic / electric type tunes. The bridge alone has the 'chicken picker' tone for those full on scrape -your -boots- off -before -you -come -in -the -kitchen tunes.

Here's a photo progression of the steps. Thanks for watching.

116716515_737933057027051_56988317788588430_n.jpg
116435922_1658495087659263_4246597247113422929_n.jpg
116455558_721341551766306_2217441690891131328_n (1).jpg
116264595_2635198930083194_7140056071527676407_n (1).jpg
117112062_659023688297286_2446544684495298268_n.jpg
116904239_634484794138440_3801225992629676021_n.jpg
117369936_644959399711111_1700712679169656181_n.jpg
116904055_731718000995256_1173239322485396963_n.jpg
117179080_622936411958258_411894690952353988_n (1).jpg
 
Last edited:

Latest posts

Back
Top