The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    So I wanted to get my feet wet building a guitar, and I wanted a telecaster with a Charlie Christian pup, so I decided to kill 2 birds with one stone. I suppose it's more of a finish and assemble than a build as the Warmoth body and neck arrive pretty well ready to go, but it's a start.
    Spec rundown:
    - Classic slab 2 piece Alder body (Warmoth)
    - Warmoth boatneck profile maple tele neck with their 10-16" compound radius, rosewood board
    - Lollar Charlie Christian pup in the neck
    - Porter 9T pup in the bridge (meant to be somewhere between conventional single coil and P90)
    - Joe Barden bridge w/ brass saddles
    - Gotoh vintage style tuners (SD 91 I think?)
    - nickel hardware
    - I chickened out on soldering the electronics and purchased a traditional tele 3 way wiring harness w/ quality components.
    - white pearl pickguard
    - using a Wudtone finish kit "Cherry Flamenco" to get a transparent cherry finish.

    Here's a mockup of the parts before starting anything.
    And this is where the body is at so far with the finish. I have a few more coats of color to layer on and then topcoat. Another week or 2. Neck is getting the tru oil treatment.
    The Wudtone finish stuff is super easy and I'm very pleased with the results so far. Should darken up just a little bit more and then the clear coat which is meant to be low gloss.

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  3. #2

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    Looking good!

  4. #3

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    scale?

  5. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Endorphins
    scale?
    Standard tele, 25.5

  6. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by pants
    Standard tele, 25.5
    If it ain't 25.5, it ain't a tele.

    This looks great! Can't wait to see the finished product.

    (Btw, go blackguard)

  7. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
    If it ain't 25.5, it ain't a tele.

    This looks great! Can't wait to see the finished product.

    (Btw, go blackguard)
    I'm confused... is blackguard a reference I'm not getting? Or are you recommending a black pickguard? Forgive me my ignorance.

  8. #7

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    No ignorance, I'm too vague.

    That cherry stain would look amazing with a black pickguard.

  9. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
    No ignorance, I'm too vague.

    That cherry stain would look amazing with a black pickguard.
    Yeah, the guard and the bridge pickup were the hardest decisions to make... I toyed with a wood guard or playing with the shape. I toyed with plain black or possibly a black pearl, but ultimately thought I'd like the contrast of the white pearl. I like how the CC pickup looks against it. Very Art Deco. Perhaps down the line I'll try swapping it out. Or just build a whole new one!

  10. #9

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    That looks awesome!

    do you plan to have the frets leveled? In my experience Warmoth guitars get a whole lot better with a professional setup. When they lacquer a neck, they do not remove the lacquer from the frets. They even write on their webpage that they leave all that to the customer as part of the assembly. Once all this is done one is rewarded with a great guitar, Taylor's to ones ownes needs and for a very reasonable price.

    keep up the great work!

  11. #10

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    Looks great! As I have just ordered tele parts from Warmoth I was wondering if you had any troubles, encountered any dilemmas, etc during the build. Were there any moments of, I wish I had put things together in a different order, or was that quite apparent?

  12. #11
    We'll see about the fret leveling, etc... I have a decent bit of experience on the setup side. Just not with starting from pieces. I didn't have it lacquered. Ordered unfinished and did tru oil on the maple. As the board is rosewood, it's staying naked.
    Ozoro- as to your question, I haven't actually assembled anything yet, just placed things together to see how it fits etc... still working on the finishing.

  13. #12
    Here's a rough idea (without getting pups out or taking the painters tape off the rosewood on the neck) of what the guard will look like on the finished product.

  14. #13

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    nice choice of components..really nice 2 piece alder body..warmoth does a heck of a job...they've been around a long time!

    transparent finishes can fade, so make sure your topcoats are on point...build up with lots of thin even coats

    have fun

    cheers

  15. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by neatomic
    nice choice of components..really nice 2 piece alder body..warmoth does a heck of a job...they've been around a long time!

    transparent finishes can fade, so make sure your topcoats are on point...build up with lots of thin even coats

    have fun

    cheers
    They sure have. I have distinct memories paging through their catalog as a kid...

  16. #15

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    Quote Originally Posted by pants
    Standard tele, 25.5
    Quote Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
    If it ain't 25.5, it ain't a tele.

    This looks great! Can't wait to see the finished product.

    (Btw, go blackguard)
    Of course. I have health problems with my hands, so a shorter scale sounds interesting. I've been playing a Stratosonic, sometimes I get out my Tele again and try.

  17. #16

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    Sweet lookin' gtr, by the way.

  18. #17

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    Quote Originally Posted by Endorphins
    Of course. I have health problems with my hands, so a shorter scale sounds interesting. I've been playing a Stratosonic, sometimes I get out my Tele again and try.

    not to stray too far from op...but...

    have you tried a fender/squier jaguar?? 24" scale...jaguar was fenders top of the line guitar! can get some cool sounds out of it...and of course the notorious clips & pics of joe pass playing one

    the squier vm jaguar model is good bang for the buck..pretty accurate representation of the vintage fender originals...if you are interested in testing the waters

    Warmoth Tele (my first "build")-c8a198829d357db5970b3b44f27738a8-jpg

    cheers

  19. #18

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    Quote Originally Posted by neatomic
    not to stray too far from op...but...

    have you tried a fender/squier jaguar?? 24" scale...jaguar was fenders top of the line guitar! can get some cool sounds out of it...and of course the notorious clips & pics of joe pass playing one

    the squier vm jaguar model is good bang for the buck..pretty accurate representation of the vintage fender originals...if you are interested in testing the waters

    cheers
    Not in many years, but it's not a Tele! I have a '96 thinline MIJ Tele, I love the neck. I've been thinking about replacing the neck with something shorter, but it should have the same profile. No money for this now anyway.

    BTW, my Stratosonic has flatwounds.

    ...and back to the original poster folks!

  20. #19
    Decided to be done with the tru oil on the neck today. It had cured for about 2 days since last coat and seemed like it was probably at a good place (probably 10-12 coats with light steel wool every few to knock it back and keep it even. Today I gave the whole back of the neck a good steel wool treatment to give it a nice satin smooth feel. I also rubbed it down with my fingers pretty rigorously... sort of a burnish. Not really sure if that helped or if it was just placebo. Here's the end effect on the neck.
    Of course the most important thing is that it feels fantastic. Ultra smooth with no hint of that high gloss "tackiness"
    Since I was done with the neck... it was time to get power tools involved...

    Installing tuners: first I had to push the bushings in. This was very unscientific. I sort of put them in place in the holes one by one and VERY carefully with the headstock upside down on the edge of the table, I used a bit of weight and hand force to push them into the holes.
    Marking the pilot holes was simple enough. With vintage kluson style tuners, you can't really help but line them all up right since they butt up against each other. So I just put them in place and marked the screw placement with an ultra fine sharpie.
    This next part made me slightly nervous... drilling pilot holes. Please don't let me drill through! I very carefully applied some tape around the drill bit using one of the screws to measure a little short of the depth.

    Then it was just a question of drilling. Success! No break thrus!
    Rest is pretty simple, just place tuners and hand screw them in place. And voila!
    So, now I'm back to having nothing else to work on while coats of finish are drying on the body...
    By the way, in case the OP is lost on a previous page and someone is curious, the tuners are gotoh vintage style with staggered posts (pretty sure SD-91 was the model number). Keeping it classic.

  21. #20
    Ok, so it was a game-changer sort of day on the body finishing front. I decided to move on to the 3rd and final color step of the Wudtone process. This step according to the Wudtone instructions, layers on a darker richer tint. (After color, there's a clear coat formulation as well). So I took steel wool to the body and went at it very thoroughly (albeit with an extremely light touch) to take down high spots, even everything out... here's the body after the steel wool and before the 3rd step application.
    Overall so far I was really pleased with the color that was developing. If I had any gripe at all, it might be that I wished the grain pattern popped out a bit more.
    And then I got to ragging on the 3rd step color. Circular rubbing in all over, followed by long even strokes along the whole face with the grain. Holy wow.

    (Kind of hard to get good pictures with wet finish but those show it pretty well)
    That step was a game changer... and I think I may end up moving on to the clear coat without doing any more applications of color. I don't think I'm going to get something I like better by messing with it more.
    And now more waiting...

  22. #21

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    It looks excellent!

  23. #22

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    Hi pants! This is moving along quite nicely. I like your sense of purpose and feeling for detail. Looks beautiful if you were to ask me.

  24. #23

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    Wow! That's a beauty!

  25. #24

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    Maybe the picture, but can you take that "orange peel" down a tad before clearcoat? wetsand?

  26. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by boatheelmusic
    Maybe the picture, but can you take that "orange peel" down a tad before clearcoat? wetsand?
    Yeah, the picture is of a just applied coat with odd lighting. As the coat dries it does some "self-leveling" Before I move to next coat I've been hitting it with 0000 steel wool to ensure there's no "irregularities"
    The finish is also a "raw" finish in that there is no grain filling and the pores and such will show through in the end.
    Last edited by pants; 05-20-2017 at 10:35 AM.