My First Guitar Body - Telecaster

[John Coloccia]

I think it looks very nice

[Julie Moriarty]

Wow... If I had any idea what we'd go through to shape a new pickguard from a sheet, I would have just ordered one, no matter how expensive it seemed.

It started two days ago. About 4PM my son walks into the shop and says, "I'm ready!" That's code for, "Can you help me finish my guitar." I dropped what I was doing (sanding the lacquer on the sapele body) and off we went. I had earlier made a template for his pickguard out of 1/4" MDF. After he removed his pickguard I found out it wasn't an exact replica and was off in places that would be noticeable. So began the attempt to make a new template from his old pickguard.

The biggest obstacle was using the razor thin edge of the beveled edge of the old pickguard as a guide for the router bit bearing. To do that we had to place a spacer in between the pickguard material and the old pickguard. I don't have any router bits that have the bearing butting up against the cutting edge of the bit. We had to fill that space.

Once the outer perimeter of the new pickguard was shaped, he rough cut a new piece of MDF on the bandsaw

After that was done, we cut the holes for the pickups, pots and switch and drilled the mounting holes. By this time 24 hours had passed! I'd guesstimate a full 8 hours of work had gone into getting everything right. Once the MDF template matched the old pickguard, we finished drilling and cutting the holes. Then we cut the 45 bevel on the outer edge. We started yesterday around 10AM and were ready to install the new pickguard around 8PM. I had no idea it would take this long.

My son overdid the double-sided taping and separating the pickguards was a nail-biter. I went to bed around 10:30 last night. My son had finished stringing the guitar and was just starting on the intonation when I retired for the day. I took this picture before he installed the strings:

This morning, he tells me there was no sound. Now we have to take it apart and check the wiring.

[John Coloccia]

Wowwee...that finish came out great. Good job, Julie!

[Shawn Pixley]

Julie, that turned out great!

I know how difficult copying the pickguard is. I changed the Seth Lover pickup at the neck position in my original Tele Custom for a Gibson. I didn't want to alter the original. I copied the shape, then used a dremel bevel router bit to bevel the edges. The Dremel guide is right at the edge of the cutters. I also have a guide for binding that can ride against thin templates, but doesn't work well in tight inside corners.

[Michael Dunn]

My son overdid the double-sided taping and separating the pickguards was a nail-biter.

I did that once... Once!!! Man that stuff is impressively strong. I use it quite sparingly now about 1 - 1-1/2" from the per miter in a few places.

Looks great Julie!!!

[Julie Moriarty]

Thanks guys. Brian is pretty pleased with his "new" guitar too. He seemed to really enjoy working on it and as time passed got more comfortable.

After he had the guitar set up and discovered there was no sound coming from the amp (he worked until 1AM to do the setup), he was pretty bummed. Yesterday I pulled the strings off the tuners and opened it up and tested it. Everything worked. Then I set the pickguard back in place. No sound. I found out Brian's copper shielding job was a bit too thorough and once you inserted the jack into the guitar, it pushed the "hot" blade into the copper shielding. That was a quick fix.

I tested it again and found the selector switch was acting skittishly. One position worked, one was intermittent and one didn't work at all. Once again, the copper shielding was the culprit. But I also found the cavity for the switch was too narrow. And it's an exact duplicate of the original body. Brian told me he had been having problems with the switch for years. The switch Fender installed looks like a switch from a Gibson SG.

Fender left barely enough room in the cavity for the blades on the switch to operate. If we ever get into another Tele Deluxe-style build, I'll enlarge that cavity.

But the guitar now works fine and Brian says it plays "awesome!"