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Thread: Imitation = Flattery - My Telecaster, Thanks Leo

  1. #1

    Imitation = Flattery - My Telecaster, Thanks Leo

    I had built this Tele as a tag along with a previous batch of instruments, it was intended for my use. I brought it along with the batch run to final rub out and then tucked the unfinished guitar in a case and let it "age" for several years. Age sounds better than, "I'm lazy". The photos stink but they're what I have. Speaking of lazy, I realise that the guitar is pretty dusty, sorry about that. I'll tidy up before taking horrible photos next time.

    Tele1.jpg

    Nothing special about this guitar except that it weighs under 7lbs. I route out the body prior to lamination and chose my materials for light weight on this guitar. I used mahogany, ebony, quilted big leaf maple and hard maple. The neck is actually a three piece lamination which I pull from a billet, I then re-orient the grain to maximize stability, you would have to know what you are looking for to see this work.

    Tele3.jpg

    I like ebony fingerboards for some reason so I used one on this guitar, the ebony also suited the colour scheme to my way of thinking. I make my own fingerboards from lumber that I have squirrelled away. I like the grey streaks althought I know that this is not desirable on a fine acoustic instrument so I used a streaked board on my guitar and let customer's pay for the black blanks. Holy cow, I can now see that this fingerboard is crying out to be oiled, my shame.

    IMG_00000677.jpg

    The edge treatment is a simple white/black purfling with a shop made hard maple binding. I don't care for plastic binding so I use wood, customers like this too and this helps me get a bit more money for a guitar.

    Sometimes laminations look cheap, this body is a three piece lamination. To make it look attractive I use a dyed swiss pear veneer between the laminations and what would look poopy now looks pretty attractive to my way of thinking. I often carve a relief in the back of my Tele knock offs but this time it was all slab!

    IMG_00000683.jpg

    I have been sitting on some pretty nice quilted big leaf maple and I thought I deserved to use it for me. I'm so good to me! This time I wanted to match the peghead to the body so I made a veneer and laminated it to the headstock, it was worth the effort. My brother designed and produced the logo, he's a talented cat, that design is over twenty years old and still looks crisp.

    IMG_00000676.jpgIMG_00000680.jpg

    I have learned to enjoy sanding! I actually like it, especially while working on instruments. Now colour work? When colour hits wood I am in a real state, if I enjoyed it anymore I'd have a stroke right on the spot. This bigleaf really showed its stuff. I use water based aniline dyes applied by hand with a rag to create the vignette. The black is a shop made lacquer which I shoot very dry with a Devilbiss EGA. The clear and sealer coats are nitro shot with an HVLP set up. Holy cow does this gun get the finish on the project without waste! As you can see in this photo, the figure creeps out from under the black when the light level is intense enough. When I have gone to see customers performing on stage the guitars almost look like they are lit from within. The trick is a very dry application of the black moving to opaque at the edges.

    IMG_00000678.jpg

    Nothing fancy about the electronics, Fender Vintage pick ups and the ususal wiring. The electronics cavity is shielded as are the wiring routes and the cavity cover is made out of 0.125" black acrylic, also part of the sheilding.

    I like the Tele because it is so functional, I will always have one. I do design and build my own guitars and I'll share some of those later once I sort out how to transfer 3X5 transparencies to jpeg.
    Last edited by Chris Fournier; 12-30-2013 at 12:55 PM.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
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    Smithfield, Va
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    Looks Good! Can't tell from the pic's but does the quilted maple show thru the burst?

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Creech View Post
    Looks Good! Can't tell from the pic's but does the quilted maple show thru the burst?
    Hi Jim, It sure does, the last image shows it.

  4. #4
    Join Date
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    Location
    Smithfield, Va
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    328
    Must be my monitor because it looks like the burst darkens to solid color. It is a beautiful quilted top regardless!

  5. #5
    Join Date
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    Beautiful guitar!
    Shawn

    "no trees were harmed in the creation of this message, however some electrons were temporarily inconvenienced."

    "I resent having to use my brain to do your thinking"

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Location
    Williamsburg,Va.
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    12,402
    Chris,I just got a little gadget for Christmas a few years ago that you drop your slides into. It feeds them into the computer. I don't remember what it cost.

    VERY nice job of putting the shading on by hand!! I haven't built a solid body since high school. I was thinking about building another just for kicks,though they are not the style I like to play. I play the Gretsch style arch top electric,or flat top acoustics. At least I used to,before my thumb joint wore out and got painful.

  7. #7
    Thanks for sharing that Chris! I love your work! I looked at all the pics first and was compiling questions to ask you but you answered them in your post. You must be a mind reader.

    I don't know about where you guys are, but ebony here is VERY expensive, about $100 bd/ft. The price has always kept me from buying it. But last time I was at the hardwood store I had guitar building in mind and saw pieces that could be used for fretboards for around $30, so maybe I'll be making my first ebony purchase soon. Chris, is that whitish appearance from the ebony or from something topping the wood?

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Julie Moriarty View Post
    Thanks for sharing that Chris! I love your work! I looked at all the pics first and was compiling questions to ask you but you answered them in your post. You must be a mind reader.

    I don't know about where you guys are, but ebony here is VERY expensive, about $100 bd/ft. The price has always kept me from buying it. But last time I was at the hardwood store I had guitar building in mind and saw pieces that could be used for fretboards for around $30, so maybe I'll be making my first ebony purchase soon. Chris, is that whitish appearance from the ebony or from something topping the wood?
    I'm so embarassed, I clicked on the image and the dusty guitar was very large on my screen. Sorry about that. The fingerboard has dust on it and grey streaking but it does look whiter in the image than in person. If I oiled that board it would be a lustrous black Julie. I like orange or lemon oil personally. Yes ebony is expensive! I haven't even looked at it in a long time but $100 doesn't surprise me, it does make me flinch! Truth is it's likely more economical to buy a pre-processed board from StewMac or Luthiers Merchantile or a local supplier. I went to Europe some time ago and while there I stopped in at Theodore Nagels inspect and buy wood, you should have seen all of the African Blackwood and ebony logs, all forklift sized and scattered everywhere. What a great day that was, I'll never forget it. Also, I've made some colourful guitars in my day and each one looked fine to me, your son's request will turn out fine!

    George, I'll look into that device that you mention. I have thousands of dollars sitting on transparencies that I need to scan. I may talk to some folks I know in the advertising business and see if they can help me out. I invested in professional photography earlier on in my career but it cost a fortune and eventually I had enough word of mouth or work in progress to show people what I was up to so I stopped chewing up my project profits on photos.
    Last edited by Chris Fournier; 12-31-2013 at 4:06 PM.

  9. #9
    As Chris says, it's very difficult to save money buying large boards unless you happen to luck on a very nice piece of wood at a great price. The waste in sourcing instrument wood is horrendous. I've told the story more then once about going into a supplier, picking out the boards I wanted, and then trying to pay for them. I think I must have had a neck pattern, or something, with me that day. They smelled blood, saw that I had picked out the cream, and started in with, "Oh....that was mixed in with the other wood, but that's instrument grade wood. We'll have to charge you for instrument grade wood". I told them, "When you spend hours selecting it, processing it into useable blanks appropriate for the use I had in mind, have it all ready for me to inspect, and eat the 75% waste sitting on your mill floor, THEN I'll think about paying you for instrument grade wood. Stop clowning around or we're done."

    I buy fingerboard blanks.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by John Coloccia View Post
    As Chris says, it's very difficult to save money buying large boards unless you happen to luck on a very nice piece of wood at a great price. The waste in sourcing instrument wood is horrendous. I've told the story more then once about going into a supplier, picking out the boards I wanted, and then trying to pay for them. I think I must have had a neck pattern, or something, with me that day. They smelled blood, saw that I had picked out the cream, and started in with, "Oh....that was mixed in with the other wood, but that's instrument grade wood. We'll have to charge you for instrument grade wood". I told them, "When you spend hours selecting it, processing it into useable blanks appropriate for the use I had in mind, have it all ready for me to inspect, and eat the 75% waste sitting on your mill floor, THEN I'll think about paying you for instrument grade wood. Stop clowning around or we're done." I buy fingerboard blanks.
    Yeah it was instrument grade wood once you spent the time laying everything out and committing to the waste! Poor business practice. Quite frankly I worked at a place where I could see the primo stock come through the door, I snagged it for the company first and me second. We were well down the food chain when it came to instrument woods, the real deals happen right off the saw so to speak and quantity is the volume and this means own a fork lift.

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