Two Teles, Part 2

Published on August 14, 2012

I’ve added captions to these photos, as you can see. Clearfork sands the bodies to 150 grit. I’ll work through 220,320,400, and 600 to get it really smoooooth. He also leaves the edges a little square, which makes it possible for me to choose the edge radius I want. I’ll be eyeballing about a 1/8″ radius, which I believe is the ’52 spec.

The neck is an Allparts TRO-W, wwhich I suppose stands for Tele/Rosewood-Wide. In this case “wide” means 1 11/16″ at the nut, instead of 1 5/8″. That doesn’t sound like much, but if you play, it’s easy to feel the difference. These are made in Japan mostly, and by the company that supplies Fender of Japan. Anyhow, they are Fender-licensed, so the peghead shape is correct, and the quality looks great. No nut or tuners: I’ll make the nut with one of StewMac’s vintage bone blanks (I use it on all my guitars, looks great and will never wear out) and get a set of Gotoh vintage Fender-style tuners with the slotted string posts.

This is pretty accurate for color. Looks good to me!

The pine body (top) is one-piece, and the swamp ash is two. Great job on the glue joint, it’s almost impossible to see from the front.

And the pre-drilled holes are great. The six string holes only go halfway through, so I’ll have to find a drill press and drill them all the way.

A Japanese neck, and an ash body from Ohio…and the neck-to-body fit is perfect!

Here’s the neck fit from the other side, on the pine body.

And the other side on the ash body. You can easily see the squared edges here, so I have some sanding to do. That little scorch mark should sand right out.

The OFFICIAL peghead shape, and an empty (but not for long) nut slot.

Nice flatsawn maple grain, which should look even better when finished.

Other smaller parts are on order. I’ll build the pine guitar first, and I’m thinking it should be an Esquire-style (no neck pickup). That setup means I can really fine-tune the bridge pickup height, without worrying about overpowering the neck pickup. And simple is always good!

I’m not trying to build an accurate reproduction of any model year, so I’ve got my 1950-ish pine body, a 60’s-style rosewood board neck, and a plain single-ply black pick guard in the mix so far. The other hardware will probably be vintage style, but I may change my mind.