Steve Avalon Telecaster

I’m currently working on a telecaster for Steve Avalon of www.myspace.com/gox

This is a guitar I was making for myself and had shelved while I was working on my acoustic instruments. Steve came round the workshop to talk about having a telecaster made and fell in love with the cherry body and walnut fingerboard combination.

Originally I was going to put some Bare Knuckle Boss pick ups in it but Steve decided on a set of Bare Knuckle Blackguard Flat 50’s for a vintage tele sound, but with a little more added power. Also we decided to add a four way switch to bring an extra series/parallel switching option. This will give Steve a really great extra sonic option.

Here’s the progress so far:

The neck has been thicknessed and cleaned,  the surface that the fingerboard will be glued onto has been made perfectly flat with a jack plane and a precision straight edge. Here I’ve just completed routing the truss rod channel. The cherry is a pleasure to work with, its seems somehow dry and soft and smells slightly of singed earth or herbs.

The truss rod has been glued in after a little work on its flexing action. I’ve decided on access to the adjustment nut at the headstock end, rather than the body end, this will make for easier access for any future adjustments.

Here I am regretting the decision to have headstock access to the truss rod! This is a slightly awkward drilling process to create a good access recess. Fortunately there’s no audio to this page, as no one wants to hear a grown man cry.

Truss rod glued in, and the fingerboard prepared and slotted, ready to glue. The underside of the fingerboard has been made perfectly flat and the piece as a whole thicknessed to 7mm, leaving enough material for radiusing and for adding relief.

Rough outlining of the neck width and headstock shape, using a coping saw. Later the headstock will be shaped and smoothed out with hand files.

The walnut fingerboard is held in perfect alignment with the use of Luthiers professional fingerboard anchor dowels. Not cocktail sticks, honestly :)

The fingerboard has been radiused and made flat along the length of the string lines.  Initial relief is then added along the string lines, measured with a straight edge and feeler gauges.  Final relief figures will be added into the frets after the guitar has had a trial stringing and the amount of up-bow has been measured. The frets were positioned by hand with a fretting hammer.

Note here the headstock shape has been finalised and the machine head holes drilled. 

The cherry body has been book matched and joined is now ready to be routed for the neck pocket. The template I have made here has been created for a precision fit to the actual neck on the left. I’ve left 0.3 mm excess in the template to allow for the thickness of the lacquer in the final stages….

Here I’m shaping the neck to the desired thickness and ‘C’ shaped profile. Initial rough shaping is carried out with rasps and files. The final shaping is done with a spoke shave and monitored with a precision straight edge. An important benefit of having a hand made guitar is that you can specify your ideal neck profile and thickness….

The telecaster shape has been cut out from the joined cherry tone wood and here I’m final shaping with a sanding block. The psychedelic patterns of this characteristic piece are making my head spin. Must be time for a tea break...