80's Headboard Telecaster Build

da_12 · Post by **da_12** » Sun Mar 27, 2011 1:11 am

Building an 80's style Telecaster.
The wood for the body I got from an old mahogany bed headboard.

Specs:

Neck:

Construction: Bolt on
Number of frets: 22
Neck wood: Maple
Fret board: Rosewood
Radius: 10″
Truss Rod: Double action Hotrod
Inlay: Mother of Pearl Dots

Body:

Wood: Mahogany
Contours: Elbow, belly
Bridge: Floyd Rose

Electronics:

Pickup Configuration: HH
Neck: Dimarzio PAF
Bridge: Dimarzio Super Distortion
Pickup rings: black
Knobs: Black Dome Knob

I'm not sure about the paint yet but I thought about yellow and black zebra striped like this.

But I may just go for plain yellow. Or maybe change the colour completely.
Here’s the headboard.

and then it cut up and being glued together so its two ply with the blue prints on top.

I made up a template.

Sitting on top of the wood that’s been glued together now.

Then tried to cut it out with a jig saw but because my jig saw is shit it started cutting at an angle and wouldn’t cut at 90 degrees at all so I decided to rout the body out of the body blank. I don’t know if this was a good or bad idea but it worked in the end.

This is it after routing most of the way through then being able to use the jig saw to cut it out once the wood was thinner.

And this is the body as it is now.

I'll have more pics and progress tomorrow but if anyone wants to see the other pictures I haven’t posted there all here. http://s1037.photobucket.com/albums/a451/_DavidAndrew/

Hot_Grits · Post by **Hot_Grits** » Sun Mar 27, 2011 5:14 am

Rockin' like Dokken.

Keep us posted!

Post by Bg » Sun Mar 27, 2011 9:12 am

yay another pointy headstocked tele, with shark fins, humbuckers and a floyd

Post by **GrantB** » Sun Mar 27, 2011 9:31 am

Good planning skills dude. You could have made a Les Paul from that board! I think Ash can work the dimarzios out for ya.

Post by Bg » Sun Mar 27, 2011 9:54 am

*UNIQUE* wrote:Good planning skills dude. You could have made a Les Paul from that board! I think Ash can work the dimarzios out for ya.

perhaps he doesn't like Les Pauls?

Ears · Post by **Ears** » Sun Mar 27, 2011 11:01 am

BG wrote:
*UNIQUE* wrote:Good planning skills dude. You could have made a Les Paul from that board! I think Ash can work the dimarzios out for ya.
perhaps he doesn't like Les Pauls?

well he could have made a Strat then

willow13 · Post by **willow13** » Sun Mar 27, 2011 12:04 pm

or maybe he just likes tele's........there someone said it

.....love the lynch look, you should go with that one

Jimmy V · Post by **Jimmy V** » Sun Mar 27, 2011 12:33 pm

You sir, have just blown my mind. Very clever!

bender · Post by **bender** » Sun Mar 27, 2011 1:01 pm

Hot_Grits wrote:Rockin' like Dokken.

Keep us posted!

+1

AiRdAd · Post by **AiRdAd** » Sun Mar 27, 2011 1:24 pm

the wood looks lovely - it's almost a smae to paint it.

da_12 · Post by **da_12** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 6:12 pm

BG wrote:yay another pointy headstocked tele, with shark fins, humbuckers and a floyd

I should have mentioned, it not going to have shark fin inlays sorry, Just boring old dot inlays. Also its not going to have a reverse headstock on this one. After I made that design up I decided I might build a fire bird with a reverse pointy headstock so this ones just going to be the normal way around. But still pointy

.

*UNIQUE* wrote:Good planning skills dude. You could have made a Les Paul from that board! I think
Ash can work the dimarzios out for ya.

It was going to be used for a Les Paul but I wanted a LP with a maple top but didn’t want to spend $150 or so on one with my inexperience. And how can I contacts this ash fellow? I found a retailer on Trade Me that can get the pickups for $115 I think it was.

Ears wrote:
BG wrote:
*UNIQUE* wrote:Good planning skills dude. You could have made a Les Paul from that board! I think Ash can work the dimarzios out for ya.
perhaps he doesn't like Les Pauls?
well he could have made a Strat then

I thought about a strat as well but I already have a squire and another strat shaped Kramer/Ibanez 'thing' and the only other blue prints I had and guitar that I could think of that I could make kinda 80's styled was a tele.

AiRdAd wrote:the wood looks lovely - it's almost a smae to paint it.

That’s what people said on another forum I posted this on. But I really don’t like natural finishes, plus I need to cover up the super glue and dust that I used to fix tear out that I didn’t show you guys haha.

alanp · Post by **alanp** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 6:21 pm

Jim Root seems to extract some brootz from his Tele, and yours looks all good to me so far

(says the man with two left thumbs.)

da_12 · Post by **da_12** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 6:40 pm

Ok I got the fret board radiused.
Before:

Then with chalk on it:

Then after. Looking much the same as before because i have a shit camera:

Then I cut the neck blank for the scarf joint. I made up a jig to put the blank through my table saw but then discovered that the table saw blade isn’t big enough to cut all the way through the width of the blank so I had to cut it by hand.

Before:

After:

It wasn’t a very clean cut so i had to plane it a lot and sand it smooth.

da_12 · Post by **da_12** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 6:42 pm

Plane the headstock down to 15cm thick with the router.

down to

While I was planeing it down I let the router slip and it dug a hole into the wood. Luckily not all the way through and luckily I could fix it with super glue and maple dust. Then I glued it up.

I thought the glue looked pretty cool here and needed a picture haha.

Terexgeek · Post by **Terexgeek** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 7:57 pm

Nice workboots!

Looking forward to seeing the results.

NZGuitars.com : Filling you with GAS since 2003