Guitar building - progress

Another Tele build.

Using a piece of bi-coloured Ash. The grain pattern of this seems to be getting more distinct - and more attractive - the more that I work it. As you can see, all the routing is now done, and there's a strange (for a Tele!) shaped control cavity that's appeared ...


... I thought I might put some active electronics in this one, so I needed a bit more space in the control cavity than a standard Tele.


That's a piece of Purpleheart that I'm using as the cavity cover. It looks quite good (in natural light, not in the photo!) as a contrast against the Ash body. I'm hoping that once it's all been oiled, the constrast will be even better.

It's all sanded to 400 grit, so I should be able to get a coat of oil on it later today. Then tomorrow can be spent putting the hardware on it, soldering, and setting-up.

Another Tele

It's time for some more guitar building, although this one will be a slight cheat.

I recently bought some BareKnuckle pickups (not cheating yet) and a Warmoth pre-made birds-eye maple neck (oops, maybe a slight cheat with that one?). I got them both second hand for a price that just meant that I had to buy them. As the BKPs are a set of "The Boss" p'ups, I've now got to build a Tele to house them. Which is useful, because I've just dissassembled the other 2 Teles that I've built, one for reshapting (the neck), and the other for recycling (the fire).

For the new build, my original plan was to use some Swamp Ash that I also recently bought. But once I'd planed it and looked at the grain pattern, I decided that it was a little too plain.

So that will be capped with something, probably some maple) and used for something else in due course. I do have some fretboard-sized purpleheart which will certainly add a little colour to the ash/maple combination.

Plan (b) for the Tele build is to use some other Ash - this is bi-coloured Ash - for the Tele body. The photo below doesn't do justice to the wood as it's just been planed and routed. Once it's had a little shaping and some finishing, I'm hoping that the full colour of the wood will become more obvious.

I'm happy with that join line though!

The Kawai collection is complete?

The question mark at the end of the post title is deliberate ... just in case I stumble across another one somewhere, sometime.
From the left ...
KS-11-XL in violin sunburst.
KS-12-XL in natural (mine from new in c1979)
KS-10-Junior
KS-12-XL in black
KS-11-XL in natural - now fitted with a pair of PRS Dragon pickups.