Build Your Dream Partscaster Guitar!

every single guitar that I build starts with a spark of inspiration I have a habit of collecting guitar parts even parts that aren't necessarily made for guitars and eventually an idea starts forming in my head [Music] hands down one of my favorite projects is putting together a parts Caster I'm always coming up with new ideas for configurations there's a reason so many people build and play Parts casters I'm talking Van Halen's frankenstrat Clapton's Blackie tomarella's arm the homeless Mason Stoops Telly even Stevie Ray Vaughan's number one Stratton Tellies were designed by Leo from the beginning to be easily assembled from a core set of Parts it's a simple but flexible system that fits so many styles of playing that's why these projects are also the perfect place for beginners to start learning the craft of luthry the setup Electronics all that great stuff starting right now I'm going to show you from start to finish how to build a tele-style parts Caster so you can build one for yourself no experience needed what's special about this build is I'm here at stewmac so I get to go shopping for all my extra parts in their enormous Warehouse I'm definitely gonna need a little help finding my way around here hey guys hey hey how's it going good I'm Dan we've you Levi nice to meet you Stephanie good to meet you I'm here building a parts caster and I need some help finding my part so I got a killer list here but I'm hoping I can get some help around the warehouse figure out where things are right we can definitely help you awesome awesome so let's start off everything located in a okay there's uh some Saddles I was looking for that are an a22h all the even numbers are on one side of the aisle odd numbers are on the other okay 22 then we got to be right in the zone okay and it starts from the top a oh right up here yep okay yes I'm looking for some 500k pots I want to experiment with right there right here sweet if you have any other questions feel free to ask cool they're letting me loose in the warehouse gonna run through the aisles try to find all the parts for this build and then we'll head up to the workshop and get this Parts Caster put together foreign top shelf three-way crl switch switchcraft Jacks here's a one Meg CTS pot oh so much good stuff must keep moving here we go though some Mallory 150s more tone caps nickel wand strings you got to get the exl110s we've got everything we need for the build let's get back to the shop foreign so here's my haul I think I've got everything we need here so let's start with the foundation of any great Parts Caster your body and your neck you maybe already have a body at home that you love a neck that you've gotten to trade or it just feels right or maybe you're starting from zero and sourcing all the new parts for your build today we're working on a Telly the Telecaster is a wonderful foundation for a parts Caster build you've got a classic body shape classic neck profiles it's one of the most simple builds with plenty of room for experimentation you might think that the body is the first decision to make in a parts Caster build but the neck is your primary interface it informs a lot of the decisions you'll make about hardware and the rest of the build process in the Telecaster world there's two main camps of necks there's vintage style and modern style I love a vintage style neck I like vintage style tuners a tighter radius and narrower Frets but you might like a more modern style build with a flatter fretboard radius and wider Frets for faster playing that decision is totally up to you but this is one of the key decisions you you want to make in your build to get the feel and the look you want to start from let's take a look at the body on a Telecaster body there's a lot more flexibility we don't have to commit to Modern or vintage style at the offset but what we do need to consider is some of our configuration a telebody is a classic platform with a fixed bridge room for two pickups and a standardized control plate while all those elements are standard there's still lots of room for exploration in a simple format before we go any further let's talk about one of the most critical steps and that's checking the neck to body fit within the neck pocket when fitting this neck do not slide in horizontally we have a tapered neck into a tapered pocket so you need to press down from the top on one end of the extreme you could end up with a neck that slides in too easily it's loose it's sloppy it leads to poor tone on the other end of the spectrum we have a body like this that's just a little bit snug and that's because we have just a little bit of extra paint appear at the edge and we need to grab a razor blade to scrape that away to get the fit we want you want to have a light touch we're not powering through any of that paint but we're just removing that lip so that the neck will slide in there it's a little bit of scraping on each side and in the corners here and I'm taking care to hold the razor blade nice and square to the neck pocket I'm not tilting it up onto the surface of the body get right out to the edge of this point this is the delicate part you can often have a little beaded finish right here at this corner another test fit pressing straight down from the top we're just about there so this neck fit is a little bit snug still and one place to check on a new neck is this lower Edge at the heel of the neck sometimes you get a little lacquer or finish build up right at that edge it's using the same razor blade scraping technique just clean a little bit of finish back on that edge see if that did it sort of press straight down again perfect a nice snug fit just the way we want it no slop no tone sucking slop and just snug enough that it stays in position without being tight another thing I like to check at the beginning of any build is the condition of the truss rod and the truss rod nut whether it's a vintage neck or a modern neck you want to know if that net is free and moving properly on a vintage style fender neck you'll find that not at the heel on a modern style you usually find it at the headstock if it's a heel adjust truss rod nut like I have here we'll go ahead and remove that and we'll do a little preventative maintenance that comes out that easily take a Q-tip and a little bit of wax and we'll lubricate the threads this helps ensure for years down the road this net will turn freely and will always have appropriate trust Rod action adjustment on these vintage style fender necks it takes a much larger flathead screwdriver than most people will have at home it's important to use the right size screwdriver so we don't chew up that truss rod nut for now we just go till it's snug if it's a headstock adjust it could be a double action nut that's captive don't try to remove that just check that it'll loosen and re-tighten next we've got to talk tuners tuning machines and installation this is a step that can really trip people up whether you're building a parts Caster or work on an upgrade there's some complexities so let's dig into it for my build with a vintage style neck I've chosen close on tuners in the vintage style I've given them even more the right look with a light relocking job I love these tuners because not only do they look the part I love the fact that they have a split post it makes for quick stringing and quick string changes now if you have a more modern neck like this roasted Maple neck by Fender you could choose a more modern tuning machine something like locking Fender tuners these are great because they have a set screw you dial in from the back of the tuning machine that locks the string at the post vintage or modern tuning machine that's totally up to you it's all about your personal style and the aesthetic you're after but more important than any aspect of style is fit the primary difference between vintage and modern tuner is size a vintage tuner hole is smaller measuring around 11 30 seconds of an inch a modern tuning hole is large measuring around 10 millimeters first I'll show you the shortcut to determine which kind of tuner you need for that we look on the back of the headstock on a modern version you'll see the two pinholes and these correspond to the two alignment pin holes in the tuning machine if you have a vintage style neck you'll see the single pilot holes in a line down your six inline tuners those correspond to the mounting screws on these tuners with no alignment pins so that's a simple shortcut if you're working with an official Fender neck but you might be working with a neck that doesn't already have the pilot holes pre-drilled that's why we always want to measure the tuner holes on the front side of the peghead to be sure there's two ways to take measurements one would be using a Precision ruler and the other a caliper as an example we take this metric ruler and check our modern neck and if you look closely you can see we're right at one centimeter or 10 millimeters if we look at this vintage style neck you can see that we're right around 11 30 seconds of an inch my favorite way to make this measurement is using a Precision caliper and for this we use the small inside diameter measuring points you want to gently extend those on the inside diameter of that hole and you can see we're just around 10 millimeters on the other hand if we take our vintage style neck convert this over to thousandths of an inch we can take a measurement the same way small points gently on the inside diameter and we're right around 350. just a hair over 11 30 seconds there's going to be a margin of error in there but you'll know you're close now that we've done the measurements and now we've got the right tuning machines with the right size tuning bushings we can move on to installation and the first part of installation is the tuning bushing these are critical because they're the top bearing surface for your tuning post and they've got to be pressed into the front of the peg head the fine tune fitting is critical here because if it's too tight you can crack the peg head and if they're too loose you can end up with finished damage down the road so let's take a close look at what's the acceptable fit so I've made up this little dummy Peg head to talk about the fine details of variation within those holes we know these are 11 32nd Souls but there'll be slight variations in the diameter of the tuner holes because a finish that's dropped into the hole worn drill bits or even slight variations in the castings for the tuner bushings themselves it's really easy to tell when the bushing has no way of fitting in that hole you can see I can't even get it to Center up and we know that's a no-go area of concern is when we start finding a spot that you think that bushing can fit in here I can just get the tapered front end of the bushing to press in and you might be tempted to start using Force to press at home but you're almost guaranteed to crack your headstock by the time you get six of those pressed in so in this next example is a bushing that's starting to fit a little further to its hole but this is still a little too tight this is finger pressure it gets in with maybe a quarter inch to go but if you were to drive all six home we'd be in trouble as we move down I've got an example that's right about the depth I like to see this is just light thumb pressure we're less than an eighth inch to go and we're almost home as we move further down we've got examples of two tuner bushings that are too loose this one will stay in if I tip the peg head up but it's easy to pull it out with my fingers long term that can shift in the hole and egg it out or damage finish and on the far and we have one that's obviously too loose This falls out with just tipping the peg head so our sweet spot is right here in the middle now if your tuner bushings are too tight you have a couple options for solving the problem sometimes it could be something as simple as a little extra lacquer around the hole and I like to use a bit like this countersink just slightly chamfer the entrance sometimes that gives you enough leeway to get the tuner bushing into the hole properly if that hole is still too tight there's a couple other options we can use a tapered reamer that very precisely and carefully removes wood from the hole we could just gently ream this out until the bushing fits the other option is to wrap sandpaper on something like small screwdriver or wood dowel and gently sand inside the diameter of the hole until it opens up enough that we have a nice fit okay so let's talk about the tools we use to press in these tuner bushings first up is a stu Mac tuner bushing press really precise way to press in tuner bushings also gives you the ability to remove them later if you need to another option is to use an F clamp now this is a little bit bigger than I might usually use but it's totally functional this still allows you to provide perpendicular pressure in a really precise way to get that bushing driven in you could use drill press to press them in or if this is your first Parts Caster build there's an option to build a simple press using a quarter 20 bolt and Wing nuts with some washers to protect the finish so for the first bushing I'll show you how to use the homemade tool this is really simple some hardware store parts set your bushing on there finger pressure still off the surface just a little bit insert bolt through the back I have a nylon washer to protect that bushing and a wing nut on the top we just thread this down I have a large washer on the back side a little rubber washer to protect the back of the Finish and we just gently screw this together that was so easy I think we'll just do them all with this thing perfect drop the next bushing on we'll drive this one home too [Music] so this last one seems just a little bit loose just wants to drop in even with the lightest finger pressure so I'll show you a trick for using super glue to tighten up a tuna bushing hole that's just on the loose side we don't want something sloppy we can't turn a 10 millimeter into a 3 8 but we can snug this up just a little bit for a better purchase so I like to use these little glue applicators it's got a perforated tip that holds just a little bit of glue this is the number 30 thick Super Glue and I just gently wipe a little around the inside carefully spreading that out go very easy we don't want any big Globs of glue inside here and not getting any on the surface of the peg head just a little bit more easy to add it it's a little harder to take it away so we'll go just a little bit at a time again spreading it to a very thin Coating in there I'll hit this with the accelerator and we'll let it cure for a minute okay we got that super glue to cure so let's test fit and make sure this is just snug enough yeah that feels right so use a little tool drive it home thread that wing nut on gently press the bushing in cool okay we've got the neck flipped over and we're ready to install our tuning machines I'm fortunate that these pilot holes were already drilled in the neck I chose but many necks aren't if we didn't have our holes in there we'd first drop all of our tuning machines through the bushings and this is in preparation for marking the spots to drill one thing that's really nice is to have all these tuning machines lined up perfectly before you start drilling any holes and for that use a small steel rule press it up against that outside edge of the tuning machines and it'll force them all into perfect alignment and use a small spring clamp to hold that in place so now we've got them lined up and we'd want to Mark where each of the mounting screw holes is going to be nice thing to do that with is an awl but if you don't have an awl you could use the exact drill bit you're going to drill the hole with and just gently turn it backwards by hand in the hole to Mark the position so go through each of those mounting screw holes and mark the drill point we'll then pull off our rule pull out the tuning machines and get ready to drill those holes what we're going to want to do is set a depth stop we're going to be drilling these mounting screw holes and the key thing is you want to make sure we don't go through the face of the peg head there's two ways we can do this one is with these really nice depth stop bits and the way these work is when you Chuck up that drill bit you can compare it to the length of your tuner mounting screw and I just line it right up here on the bit pressing that bit back into the Chuck until I have the depth I want and then chucking up the bit with the plastic collar right back against the Jaws this gives you a nice step stop that'll Spin and not more on any of your surfaces but it'll prevent you from going too deep if you don't have this step stop you can use a little flag of tape do the same thing compare the depth of the screw and tape that little flag on there this gives you a quick visual cue when you've hit the right depth without the risk of going through that big head face so let's look at one of the finer details of how you size a pilot hole drill bit to the screw you've got key thing here is we're not drilling a hole to the outside diameter of the threads we're trying to drill a hole that's approximately the diameter of the core of the screw that'll give you enough purchase for the screw without risk of stripping the head if you have fine enough caliper you can measure the inside diameter of the screw but you can also do this visually look for that shiny Center on the screw compare it to our drill bit [Music] we're done drilling our mounting holes but I still like to use the steel rule to get a perfect alignment now we're ready to talk about the tuner mounting screws these are delicate little Phillips head screws we want to use a screwdriver that fits them really well you don't want to try using a big number two Phillips and we also want to apply a little bit of wax to those threads to help lubricate them as we drive them for the first time in the hard maple of the neck I like to use beeswax I've got this little chunk I keep around the shop just a little bit on the threads is perfect and you'll feel how much easier it is to drive that screw home once you wax the threads it's also a good moment to check your pilot hole if this is really hard to drive home you might need to go up one size in your drill bit this feels just right there's a little tension not too hard no risk of stripping it out let me bring it up snug I'll go ahead and put the rest of these screws in there we've got our final tuning machine mounting screw driven home lined up beautifully feels good to get the tuners on there we're ready for the next step so now we're ready to start installing Hardware in our body for this we want to start on the back side of the guitar body with the string ferrules a Telecaster is strung through the back of the guitar it's a through body stringing and these metal inserts help protect the body from the ball ends of the string we want to start here because the body will lay much nicer on the workbench without any hardware on the front so let's flip it down and take a closer look on a made in Mexico Fender body like this you want to make sure you use Fender branded ferrules for the best fit they're subtle differences in the lip and in the style of the hole that's been drilled and we want to make sure that these press home without chipping the paint these start out as brand new Fender ferals that I took a moment to Relic so it fits the vibe of this build let's talk about how to install these string ferrules we need to press them squarely into the back of the body I'm going to use a drill press today because that's my preferred method if you don't have a drill press don't worry you can use a small wooden dowel that fits nicely in the back of the string ferrule line it up squarely with the body and we'll tap it in with a hammer key thing here is not to use a large Hammer we don't want to pound this in hard we don't want to rest chipping the paint this is a precise process that calls for more delicate Hammer something like a little dead blow fretting Hammer works great I want to take a moment to talk a little bit more precisely about string feral fit some ferals like these have a little lip around the edge and those can be pressed in where they sit flush with the body into a recessed hole like this but some holes are drilled straight and this lip is going to sit on the surface of the Body for string Furrow with a lip and what I think looks like a recessed hole I can do a quick check of the fit by flipping the ferrule upside down and seeing if it fits flush this one will so I know when we go to press it in it's worth trying to drive it home flush with the body we're ready to get after it line that up nicely in the hole get our bit centered right in the center of the ferrule and gently slowly press it home key here is not to press so hard that we start creating a dimple around the string feral we just want to go to where it's flush with the body and no further take your time here and go slow the mark of a really nice build can be how well these string ferrules are installed we've got them all pressed in flush with the body with no dimpling or paint chips let's talk strap buttons we're gonna have to have some way to wear this great guitar we're building there's lots of options for strap buttons If you're someone who loves to jump around on stage you might be looking at something like a locking strap since I'm going with a more vintage Vibe on this Parts Caster build I've chosen these old style non-locking strap buttons that came pre-reliked they're going to look the perfect part on this build for installing the strap buttons we don't want to drive that screw straight into bare wood we want to make sure we drill a pilot hole so we don't risk stripping the screw head or breaking off the screw luckily this body already comes with the pilot holes pre-drilled but if your body is not pre-drilled I'll take you through the steps to show you how it's done find your approximate location I'm choosing to put in a very traditional spot on the upper horn on my Telly use some low tack tape this will allow us to mark on the body without damaging the finish I then use a small Precision t-square to help me Mark the center line from front to back on the body so we Mark the center line put in our Crosshair this gives us a perfect Target for drilling that pilot hole I like to choose a pilot hole drill bit that's even a little smaller than I might use for tuning machine mounting screws or other Hardware on the body you have to be able to trust these threads to hold the worst thing that can happen is for your strap button to pull out of the body as we did before with the tuning machine mounting screws we use a depth stop bit so I've chosen my bit I'll set my depth stop to match the length of the screw tighten the Chuck and now we have precise control of that whole depth so just like before little wax on the threads with the screw through the strap button I like to use these little felt washers to protect the finish on the body from the strap button itself these just slide over the screw and we're ready to drive it home use a screwdriver that fits well I like to go snug on these but definitely not as tight as you can go that felt washer provides a little bit of cushion so the strap button doesn't rattle you want to make sure it's secure without risking stripping any threads that feels just right cool we'll spin around and do the other side since we've pre-drilled a pilot hole we'll go in nice and square straight without any risk of stripping that's perfect that should hold for years so we're finally at the point that we need to bring our body and our neck together to start to see what this guitar really looks like and our first step in this process is to do a quick check on our neck alignment to make sure that things line up close enough to move forward with the process we'll want to have our neck our body our neck plate and our neck mounting screws for the neck mounting screws be sure you use a big enough Phillips screwdriver a Phillips number two fits most snug so we don't strip those screws out and of course we want to have our beeswax to lube those threads so I'll go through quickly Lube all the threads with wax now this neck has pre-drilled mounting holes as many parts Caster necks you have will but we still need to check the alignment of these holes to the holes in the neck pocket for this put our neck back in the neck pocket I can just stand this up on the bench and I've got a drill bit that's just a little bit smaller than my screw diameter and the easy way to check is just to make sure that they go that full depth goes past the depth of the body here and we're looking good in each one of these holes so we've got good alignment if for some reason one of these holes is off we'll have to take the neck out drill the hole out plug with a dowel and redrill that hole most of the time with a Fender Strat style or telestyle build you're going to have perfect alignment but always check that you'll need your neck mounting screws and a neck plate I had this Old Neck plate kicking around my toolbox it'll look the perfect part with the Nicks and scratches for this build hold the neck plate in place and we'll just get these screws started in the neck we don't want to go tight yet we're just going snug if this is a neck that's been threaded on a body before one of the key steps is to actually turn the screw in Reverse so it drops into the threads and then start driving it home this neck has not been mounted before so it's the first time the screws are going into fresh wood just come up snug this is not the final mounting of the neck just doing an early check of alignment with snug fitting of the screws so we've got those just snug so that the neck won't move around at all but it's got just enough that if we need to push it side to side we can give it a little bit of movement so now we'll check the alignment for this I like to use a piece of high visibility string something like this orange cord some bright fishing line something allows you to easily see the string on the body at this point to check that alignment we'll string the string through the back of the body just push those through here on the two outside strings our high e and our low E string so we have a continuous piece of string across the back of the body this prevents us having to try to tie any fancy knots to hold this in place we're not going to pull this up to any high tension I'm just going to wrap that on as though it's a string if you don't have any cord like this around you could actually use actual guitar strings just like this because it gives really high visibility example of what we're after here we're not looking for a final perfect alignment we'll check that once we have the bridge on and we actually string up what we are looking for is really close to equal spacing between that low E and high e and the outside of the fretboard if needed before you tighten the neck up you can usually push it back and forth either up or down just a little bit to get that alignment right so as we look at our high visibility string here we can see roughly equal spacing between the low E and the outside the fretboard and the high e in the outside of the fretboard but it proves that we're in a great spot to keep moving forward with the build we're really getting deep into it now let's talk about Telecaster Bridges you've got two primary options the traditional three saddle tele bridge and the six saddle Bridge the main difference is right there in the name a three saddle has three brasser steel Saddles and three intonation adjustment screws where the later style six saddle has an independent adjustment for each of your six strings what that allows you to do is do more precise intonation adjustment on a six saddle with a more classic vintage look with the three saddle I'm someone who loves to be right in the middle I love the look of a three saddle but with better compensation so instead of just the straight brass Saddles I like to use these goto in tune Saddles that have offset string saddle slots this helps us get the best intonation with the Vintage look switching out these Saddles from the old style to a compensated saddle is really straightforward just undo each of these screws remove the screw go right down the line and take each of these out we have our new ones to place in here intonation screw goes from the back spring goes through as you put these on just make sure that you've got the heads up on your string height adjustment screws sometimes you can drop them in upside down you can see I even took time to Relic the screws just a little bit at the back just so they look right on this Old Bridge I had kicking around perfect ready to look at mountainous on the body so here's how we check that bridge fit on a tele on most vintage style teles we're going to have a common spacing of these four mounting screw holes between the body and the bridge that's a pretty standardized measurement you've got a modern body with a modern telebridge you might have some variation there's crossover between the two so check the measurements and that key measurement is outside screw mounting to outside sugar mounting hole this I can just do a quick visual alignment all four of those mounting screws line up and I've got alignment of the six through body string holes as well so it's gonna be a perfect fit so we're ready to mount this bridge plate but before we do that it's a great time to put our Bridge pickup in place otherwise we're going to be pulling this off again in just a little bit so let's take a close look at the bridge pickup I'm going to use on my build this great Eric Daw custom wound Telecaster Bridge pickup I love these pickups he lightly pots them he winds them in the traditional Leo fashion and he does a great Relic treatment that'll look killer with his guitar but I brought in another Telecaster Bridge pickup to show you a difference in the ground wire and if I turn them over you can see one of the key differences and that's the metal plate on the back of the bridge pickup this Daw pickup has the traditional copper plated steel plate this adds power this adds bite great for the tone This Modern Fender pickup doesn't have that plate so there's a tonal difference but there's also a functional difference we have to ground our bridge and our strings and this plate has a key role in that on the back of this pickup you can clearly see the ground wire connecting from our ground solder here Through the Wire soldered to the base plate this allows us to ground the bridge through the mounting screw that attaches to this plate in this pickup without a steel base plate we have our ground wire connecting to this terminal that will ground to our Bridge it must ensure when installing this pickup that the terminal is against the bottom of the Metal Bridge plate that ensures your strings and Bridge are grounded there's two configurations you'll see let's get this bridge pickup mounted before we Mount the bridge onto the guitar we've got three mounting screws on a traditional tele Bridge so you run a screw through the bridge we then have these Springs that hold tension on the pickup and allow us to adjust the height put the spring on first we'll start getting these Loosely threaded I just start each screw with a couple of turns this last one could be a little tighter to get the spring in there we can leave the pickup just mounted pretty low for now pickups on we have a wiring hole that goes from the bridge pickup cavity into our control plate cavity so carefully feed those wires through and gently pull those make sure nothing binds up there should be plenty of room for that pickup and our wires we can just tuck down there we'll talk wiring later before we actually Mount that bridge to the body we can do a quick test on our ground continuity just to confirm that we've got that ground wire hooked up correctly to the bridge most meters will have a setting that's a continuity test that sounds a little buzzer when you've got continuity and that just means we've got good electrical connection so what I do is I hook one lead to the ground wire my pickup in most cases that's going to be the black wire and take the other lead and touch to the bridge we hear a beep we've got good continuity so we know we've got a ground connection we've got our four Bridge mounting screws that we're going to wax the thread as we've been doing on all the screws so far it's a pre-wax those four now this can be as simple as using a large handheld screwdriver and number two Phillips nice big bit that fits tight in those threads but there's always the risk when we're doing this screwing over the top of guitar body of slipping and stabbing the top of the guitar so I like to do something that maybe some people think is a little more controversial I use a driver to get the screw started this gives me a little bit more control and I have less risk of stabbing the top of the guitar I like to do the outside two screws first just bring that right down close I'll do the final tightening by hand [Music] then I'll switch over and finish these by hand still like the alignment everything's looking good we go pretty snug you don't have to go insanely tight on this but it does hold our Saddles our Bridge pickup we want nice good contact with the body here for the best transfer tone so we've got that bridge screwed down on our Telly but I want to give you a hot tip on how to approximate our intonation before we go any further it'll save us a bunch of time later in setup and it's using a tool that I always have around the shop that's usually use an acoustic guitar building but works really well in quickly approximating intonation on electric guitars as well this is the saddlematic this tool works by helping you measure half of your scale length by placing this little block over your 12th fret and sliding this end of the tool up to the face of your nut you then flip it around placing it back on the 12th fret and we now have offset pointers at this end that show exactly where our saddle should be sitting this should give us approximately correct intonation and I can see right now these Saddles need to come back a little bit more before I even I String up I can just quickly bring them back into approximate position our high ease in position bring our low E back and we just look right where those pins are positioned lift it up so it doesn't catch then we can set our Center saddle approximately between those two and we should be right in the ballpark later when we do our final setup so now we're ready to dive deep into electronics and the Heart of our next decision on electronics will be our neck pickup so I've got three bodies on the bench so we can talk a little bit about configurations you might have or mods you want to make and how that will impact the neck pickup you can choose the first is a Classic 60s Fender body we've got the traditional single coil neck pickup and a traditional route for our Bridge pickup control plate neck pocket are the same this is the most standard teleconfiguration you're going to see and if you're coming to the bench with a found body something you already have in the shop it's most likely going to look like this another option you might see are the new universally routed Fender bodies this is the Fender Deluxe what they've done is done a much bigger pocket at the neck pickup they've added a middle position so you could do a Nashville style third pickup and then the traditional Bridge pickup and control plate routing and on the far end we've got my body I took a Classic 60s body and chose to Route it out to give me a little additional room so the body style that you're working with can help inform what pickup you can choose if you have a classic 6 style body with the traditional neck pickup route you'll need to use a traditional Telecaster neck pickup shape there's a lot of options out there for Fender tele neck pickups many makers offer different covers open unplated or no cover at all and different wines but you're locked into that particular silhouette once we move over to the more Universal or a body that's been routed for humbuckers it opens up a lot more options and we can take a close look at those once we go to the bigger route we of course can bring in something more Spanky like a Stratocaster single coil pickup in that neck That's a classic sound that's fun to bring to a Telecaster and it fits right there of course we have tons of options in the humbucker space if you want something with more Drive fatter Fuller tone it's a killer option in neck pickup we could bring in something more biting like a P90 that can be really cool the universal route allows that to fit in there or it could go with something much more esoteric things like a lipstick pickup or even a filter Tron might be the Best of Both Worlds between hum canceling features of a humbucker but more of that brightness and detail of a single coil I think this is the kind of pickup that I want to go with for my build something unique that you don't often see in a Telly so you can see there are a ton of great options in pickup Styles and configurations you can choose from we could do a 10 part series on pickups alone we're not going that deep just know that there's a lot of models you can choose from both big names and boutique makers and tons of room to explore the sound and the look that's right for you so now we've got our Bridge installed we've selected a bridge pickup and a neck pickup it's time to talk about the control plate and it consists of just a few simple components we have a volume control a tone control a switch is how we switch between or combine in different ways our two pickups a capacitor for a tone control and sometimes a treble bleed there are three main styles of switch that you'll see on a Telecaster control plate the very original three-way switch which gives you neck combined pickups and Bridge a four-way switch that adds an additional option for combining pickups and then a five-way switch which gives you the ultimate number of options for configuring the combination of pickups but that's it it's that simple so as you think about starting to wire up your control plate you've got to find a schematic you're excited about that could be informed by the pickups you've chosen or the switching configurations you want and you can find those schematics online on forums there's a number of great books this is Eric Das new book solid sound that I helped design we're really excited about it there's a few top secret Telecaster wiring schematics in here that I'm particularly excited about but if all this is sounding like way too much electronics for you there's always the option of some great pre-wired harnesses there's three-way and four-way switching configurations with top quality components that are all soldered up and ready to go so this is a great backup if you're not ready to dive in deep the great thing about a tele-style parts Caster is it's such a safe and easy place to learn guitar wiring and the worst thing go wrong is it doesn't work the first time with soldering you can always unsolder re-solder try again until you get it right so let's build one of these together right now the foundation is our control plate I chose a relic one there's a couple different styles you can find one that's going to look best for your build they all have the same configuration two holes for pots and one switch position so we got that next we want to pick our switch I've chose to go with a four-way just give me one other configuration option go with the four-way switch the next decision to make is potentiometers and there's a few more considerations with regard to what potentiometer value you choose based on the pickups you're using with the traditional two single coil setup in a Fender guitar we usually use a 250k pot but you've probably also seen there's 500k and one Meg pots that are used in Guitar wiring it's much more common to use a 500K pot with humbuckers the consideration here is that a 250k allows a few more of the high-end details to bleed to ground as you move up to higher values 500k and one Meg you preserve more of that high end detail so humbucker is going to sound a little bit better with a 500K pot at the upper end of the spectrum you've seen Jaguars and Jazz Masters that use one megpots and that's part of how those have that bright high end detail it's really about the tone you're after there's no right or wrong answer here feel free to experiment and you can always unsolder those pots and swap in some new ones to see how they sound since I'm going to be going with a filter Tron pickup it's a little bit closer to humbucker I think I'm gonna go with 500k pots and see if that preserves some of that high in detail that I want to have so we've got our switch and we've got our pots let's talk capacitors everyone loves to talk about tone capacitors in the guitar there's lots of makes and models both vintage ones that you can salvage or buy NOS from vintage silver Mica and film capacitors including ceramic capacitors to Modern takes modern ceramic orange drops paper and oil or modern film what really matters on your tone capacitor is the value as you go up higher in value higher microfarad it's going to bleed more of your high end detail off to ground as you turn down your tone control to preserve more of that detail you can use a smaller cap when I choose a tone capacitor for guitar I like to preserve some of those high-end details for a more subtle tone roll-off my preference is to use something like a 0.02 or 0.015 microfarad but you can pick anything you want from .05 to even less than .01 microfarad experiment a little it's a really fun place to try it before we heat up our iron I want to talk about one more decision to make and that's which direction we want our control plate on a Telecaster you can do the traditional setup with the pickup switch at the front volume and then tone in the back or we can do a reverse setup which is my favorite that puts your volume control first tone and your pickup switch at the back this gives me easier access to the volume control it's the way I like to wire them so make that decision get the iron heated up and we'll start soldering this turned up pretty hot I like to work hot when I'm soldering I'll start wiring this up I'm going to do it reverse so we'll get the switch installed first nothing screws in nice and snug cool we've got our switch in we'll get our potentiometers in there next so we do nut lock washer flat washer and a nut take a moment to get that pot nice and square on the back of the control panel as long as it's reasonably centered it will fit in the control cavity but if it's off center too much it could hang up when we try to install it later a nut driver get this nice and snug this is something that can come loose down the line and really annoy the player it's good got this one open that up clamp this up in the nut and saddle Vise to hold it while we work and we can start soldering we're going to start with what I call a safety ground on a Telecaster control plate we ground through the back of the pot we actually use the control plate itself to do our grounding but I like to do a backup ground between the two pots provide some mechanical support for the pots so even if those nuts come loose they don't want to turn for that I like to use a little heavier gauge wire about that long push back the cloth and we'll take off the insulation [Applause] we're going to solder it in place on the side of these two pots I like to use a little bit of denatured alcohol on a Q-tip just to make sure we've cleaned off any contaminants so these pots ship with a light coating of oil on it or they just have some oxidation just going to do a little bit of pre-soldering on the side of the pot one spot there you can see by degreasing the side of the pot you get really nice adhesion that we can bring in round wire side one get our second side on there nice and clean no need for extra solder big Globs anything we just went nice wet looking solder joints moving on to put the tone cap on our pots I like to use some pliers just gently Bend up these contacts gives us a little bit more room between them for our cap and also easier access for threading wires through them to figure out how to fit this tone cap so we need to go from this lug to the back of the pot to ground that into the cap this lead we need to curve around hit the center lug on our tone pot let's use a little bit of insulation cut off the section push back cloth wire so you just push it back take the wire out if we're careful we should be able to feed this onto the leg of our capacitor there we go this is going to work beautifully oh it's going to fit perfect clean off the back of this pot trim off the excess wire put a little solder on the back of the pot here put on this lug and then we'll get right here at this end too looks good all right we got our capacitor on there let's keep going we're good to get the switch wired up to the potentiometers so this is the main wire that runs from our switch over to the two controls of course you can use the traditional black and white cloth covered wire but there's some fun colors available and it's nice to add a little bit of character and style to your wiring you get a lot of inspiration looking at photos online there's a lot of different ways to Route the wires to achieve the same schematic results take your time look at some photos if you haven't done it before I still look back at Old work of mine and look at ways to improve it make it look nicer or do it more efficiently just the right length between our lugs so that's looking good right there but this piece of insulation back in the middle electronically this isn't necessary I just think it looks really nice it gives me very clean continuous runs I'm going to tack that in place and we'll continue on here I'm just going to cut that insulation off and tie two lugs together with this piece of wire [Music] there we go now we just need to run a ground wire down this side from these two lugs down to the side of the pot so I'm going to clean that side of the pot again good connection some black wire for this one through here connect these two lugs that'll work beautifully you always want to make sure you let the solder cool completely so the wire doesn't move I've got two more lugs to tie together and then we'll have this one wrapped up foreign we've got it all soldered up things are looking clean looking tight nice solder joint so we know it's going to sound good can't wait to get this wired up so before we drop this into our body I want to talk about another optional element that some people like to add and that's a treble Bypass or treble bleed cap one element that happens on a volume pot as you roll it down is you also lose high end and some people like to preserve that with the bypass cap simply sold it across these two lugs so it's very easy to add one thing you could do is make up a little clip in test unit for your treble bypass here I've got the cabin resistor hooked to some small alligator clips and for testing the tone out later on I can just clip it into the circuit and hear what it sounds like as simple as that this is a personal choice about the tone you're after and the style of playing I chose not to add that on mine but I might add it back later thank you pickguard is the natural next step in our parts Caster build and it's one of my favorite steps this is where you get to decide how you're going to dress your guitar this is all about expression and style there's some functional considerations but a lot of it is how you want it to look one of the main reasons why this is the perfect point to bring in the pickguard is we want to make sure this is fitting between our neck that we've installed the bridge that we've installed and our control plate we've got this wired up but not mounted yet but everything comes together at this moment we want to check alignment it's kind of a fun point to also bring in some knobs it can really start to change the look of a guitar this is a classic white three-ply pick guard we could switch it out to something like a black three-ply that's cool go with some older style knobs give it a little more character those tall boys with mint green that's also an eight-hole pattern these would be totally interchangeable some red knobs with some mint green maybe a little bit too much of a Christmas Vibe let's bling it up white pearl that's a little more classy looking some tortoise bring out the red and those knobs here's a Bakelite pick guard that I did a custom paint job on they were taking it back more 50s style pretty sweet you see there's a lot of options and you can completely change the look of the instrument just by switching out a pickguard as we take a look at these there's two main categories of pickguard mounting on a Telecaster style pickguard there's five hole and eight hole what we're specifically talking about is the holes around the perimeter of the pickguard that screw it to the face of the guitar so here's classic five hole and here's what we see in terms of a more modern eight hole configuration it's pretty easy to switch between the two of them if you're going from a five hole to an eight hole we will have to drill some additional mounting holes if we're going back to a five hole those other mounting holes are covered by the pickguard so it's a really easy change to make with just a few holes to drill or a few holes to cover up so you can see that both of these pick guards are mounted for a traditional single coil Telecaster neck pickup we might be looking at any number of other pickup options so let's look at the implications there on other pickguards we could take a look at everything from an Esquire style pickguard with no neck pickup or traditional single coil or even something like a humbucker number of these are available commercially you can buy them pre-routed but there's some configurations that you might have to do some custom modifications for so here again is that custom pickguard I made for this build to house that filter Tron pickup I took a regular single coil routed pickguard 3D printed a router template and did simple modification routing for that filter drawn pretty easy modification to customize this any way you need I'm going to bring this pickguard in so we can look at the fine tune fitting before we start drilling brought the control panel in and it's not yet mounted it's free in its cavity and our pickguard is also free to move so these are two moving elements that we want to check our alignment and make sure we like how they sit once we've got this in position which I'm liking how this fits everything looks square will low tack tape this to the top of the guitar before we start marking our holes or drilling any holes so I like to use a wider low tack tape low tax we don't risk any damage to the Finish but I like to have some good coverage so it holds things securely in place I like how this is sitting just make sure you don't cover any of the screw hole positions but add some tape anywhere else you can to hold things securely down I'm going to show a couple different options that you can use at home for marking the holes for your pickguard mounting one of the first options would be to use a high contrast removable pencil something like this white pencil on a black body it's going to make it easy to see another option would be to use something like a center punch or an awl to very carefully Mark the finish at the center of each of those holes I'm going to show you a third option that I like to use on my bench and that's using these depth stop bits in kind of a unique way just like before we're setting it to at least the depth of our screw and pushing the collar back against the jaws of the Chuck so we've set that depth stop collar when I slide it down they have a tapered end and it fits perfectly in most countersunk pick guard control plates I get my drill squared to the body and I hold on to that Dev stop collar what I'm going to do is use that to self-center the drill bit and just drill straight into the body carefully pull it straight back out and we've got a nice centered hole perfect depth first screw the control plate has the same countersunk holes so we've got all the holes drilled get this tape off one consideration when we've drilled new holes into finish is that we could get finished chipping when we drive home that screw to mount the control plate of the pickguard I like to use a countersink bit like this to lightly chamfer those holes to ensure we don't get any chip out this one has enough flutes that it's easy to spin by hand without any chatter we don't need to use the drill just get all of these holes countersunk just a little bit to remove that finish there we go so before we screw that pick guard down to the guitar body we need to get our neck pickup mounted we've got these two pick guards to show the primary ways the pickups are mounted on the neck of a Telecaster both of these are routed for traditional single coil but you see this one is pre-drilled with the mounting screws in the pickguard and this one the pickup actually hangs from the pickguard itself and you control the height through those two screws in this case there's not two holes drilled here the pickup is actually screwed directly into the base of the pickup route I've pre-drilled mine for pickup mounting which I think is an easy way to adjust that height you'll have different mounting approach based on the pickup you've chosen I'll get this one mounted to the pickguard we'll get this screwed down so this is that pickguard mount we've got our mounting screw goes through the pickguard almost all pickups have either a spring a piece of rubber tubing or in some cases foam block from the back to help push that pickup up as we adjust the height I'll get this first leg mounted the leg is what we call the little tab on the back of the pickup then we'll do the second one almost all pickups to mount this way it's kind of fiddly business to get that screw the spring the pickup all lines so those are thread on there I can keep the pickup sitting low for now and get this pick guard screwed down to the guitar body the one fiddly bit can just be running your pickguard wire through the access hole here a little patience little finesse you'll feel that sink right down there sits beautifully so we'll grab again our beeswax paraffin wax or Furniture wax because we're going to wax our mounting screws since this is the first time they're going in we want to be nice and square to the body since we drilled the right size pilot hole they go in easy just like that so our next step is getting our output Jack wired up and installed and there's two primary ways that you have an output Jack installed in a Telecaster style Body there's the vintage style cup that always comes loose those things are variably Troublesome so I try to avoid them whenever I can they're vintage correct in a historic instrument but any newer instrument or parts Caster build I love to use an electro socket Jack this screws into the same hole in the side of the body so it stays secure and the output Jack stays secure within that socket so this is the absolute best way to go if you're doing a parts Caster build so let's take a close look at that output Jack and how we wire it up if you look in here closely we've got the sleeve which is our ground and the tip which is our hot connection usually we have corresponding colors our black wire is a ground like to actually curve it over and crimp it closed the main reason I like to do this is this is one area on a guitar that can have stress or movement if this Jack ever turns which an electro socket shouldn't but if it ever does I want to make sure I have a secure to connection so we always have a solid solder joint I always get this hot wire ready to go as well pull back that cloth covering create a little Loop crimp this on grab my 60 40 solder the hot iron we'll solder these up I'll do the same thing on the hot lead well that solder cools we don't want any movement I pull nice tension back on the loop that I crimped so those are secure I like to just put a couple sleeves of heat shrink on here to keep things neat and tidy it's a clean look so let's get that socket installed on the side of the body take our two leads fish them down through the output Jack hole and up into the control panel area push that electric socket Jack down squirrel against the body it's nice to take time to get these screw holes lined up if we don't want to rotate this 90 degrees and be drilling or screwing out into the more shallow edges of the body again we take a depth stop bit set to match our installation screws these are drilled at an angle here foreign those threads drive them in just like we've done the others so that's in you can start finishing up our control plate wiring we're in the home stretch of our wiring we've got a control plate ready we've got all of our wires routed and we're going to bring this together to finalize this step just worth noting that we want to leave a little extra length on all of our wires give this an opportunity to open this up in case you want to take a look at it need to do any repairs or modifications down the road so let's get into the soldering one of the first things I like to do bring our ground wires together here push those back we're going to solder those to the back one of the pots we've already cleaned the back of the pot and soldered here before so it's tinned and ready to go get these wires tinned just a little and we're going to stick them to the back of the pot again you don't want a cold solder joint you have to be able to hold this still while it cools we got that in we have our output wire here we've taken our time to get things right so far so don't rush this you know good connections you want clean wiring seems like that should work nicely Okay so we've got our grounds and our output wired up now I'm going to do the final wiring of the hot leads of our pickup this is critical to make sure you get those to the right lugs on the switch for the correct switching configuration just take your time check your schematic feel free to look up photos of other people who've wired the same output it's nice to look at examples of how these go get that wiring right and double check okay so we're going to get our Bridge pickup hot lead wired in here like to take my time with each solder joint and make sure I'm really happy with how it looks there's no sense in rush in this some pickups have really nice robust 20 or 22 gauge cloth covered wire some pickups like this filter Tron have a little bit more delicate wire so handle it accordingly we don't want to go rough with it break anything off or for anything if you have any wires that haven't yet been soldered if you can see the strands of stranded wire it's nice to pre-tin those before you try to solder them do another connection also leaves just a little extra solder on The Wire that helps when I make a connection to one of these lugs because I have one more connection to make perfect let's get this tucked in here and see how it fits don't just cram this control plate down you take time push the wires down check for stress specific stress on any of the joints or wires that get caught on the side of the pot so that could be a key thing that hangs up as we bring this down against the body I really like how that fits we can put in our two screws same thing we've been doing wax those threads nice and square to the surface just drive it straight in tighten it up our wiring is done so let's talk knobs and switch tips this is the final component selection of our build and can really affect the character and style of your guitar I've narrowed down my selection from the big bag I brought but there's an incredible number of directions you could go from scrounging vintage knobs from old equipment or used stores to new production or reproduction there's a few considerations with knobs you need to make sure that they're going to fit the shaft diameter of your volume and tone pot most often on a t-style build we're using shafts that are quarter inch so as long as it all will fit a quarter inch shaft anything goes this is the set that I'm really excited about has much more of that 50s Vibe reminds me of something TK Smith might do fits kind of the energy of this so once you get your knobs selected we can look at some switch tips there's the two classic top hat and Barrel knobs that you see on a lot of Fender builds both of those are great but there's a few other vintage style knobs you can find these are your dollar sign ones I collected up over the years get that on there you can kind of see how they look for that switch tip you want just a snug fit you need to be able to pull it off if you have to do any repairs or change the switch so you don't want to glue it on I think this is my final selection these cool 50s vintage Vibe knobs the dollar sign switch tip I think this really brings the look together so let's get these installed to get those indicators aligned where you want them I turn my knobs all the way to 10. then you can position the indicator where you want it when you're Turned Up full volume I've got a little tip for how to set the height on these knobs so they're not running on the control plate that rubbing can just be an annoying sound or they can bind up I grab a pick you can really pick any thickness you want and you take the pick with the knob still loose and set it under the knob and this gives us a simple little height gauge to get some clearance and this allows to set both knobs at exactly the same height just a nice visual touch get in here gently tighten up the set screws there's no need to crank these tight we don't want to strip them out locked in position cool this is a pretty incredible moment we've got our full guitar we've made all of our component selections we've got a neck that feels great and a body that I love and we're ready to move into setup mode this is a perfect time to take a moment to get that fretboard and your Frets in beautiful shape one of the first things we'll do is a light polish on the Frets a quick way to do it is just to use the fingerboard guard that surrounds the Fret to protect the wood well I use some polishing papers to put a quick shine on these I'm just going to give these a light buff now we'll grab some fretboard finishing oil just condition this new Rosewood if it's an older fretboard there might be some finger Grime to clean off if you want if it's a newer fretboard it may not have been oiled yet it's nice to get that freshened up get that excess off of there clean next to each fret so we don't have oil on our fingers later it's looking beautiful it's time to grab your favorite pack of strings we're going to string up the low E and the high e that gives us a final chance to check the alignment I'm happy with where that's at I'll snug up these next screws before we put all the strings on there's a consideration to have I've got a vintage style neck where the truss rod adjustment nut is at the heel of the neck my pick guard is in the way so I'm going to loosen the strings a little get that out of my way before we string up knowing that we're going to have to adjust that truss rod nut on this first setup okay got the pickle out of the way let's get the rest of the strings on with the strings on this is a perfect moment to install our string tree a string tree is a piece of metal that pulls down on usually the high e b string sometimes the G string as well they screw to the face of the peg head and pull down on those strings to provide balance tension across the nut so with those strings on and use an awl to Mark where we want to drill I like to place it just about in line with the a string post set a depth stop bit again this is another great place to use a countersink bit lightly chamfering that hole wax the screw threads again this particular string tree we're not going to drive that screw all the way down to the face of the headstock this one actually floats up with the strings to give us balance tension across all of them so we're all tuned up strung up attention now we're going to start the setup there are four steps and it's the same four steps every time we check the relief check the action at the nut check the action at the 12th fret and then set intonation so let's check the relief I like to use a neck relief gauge sits at the first fret in the 12th fret and it measures my relief at the fifth so there's a wide range of opinions on the perfect relief setting and it depends mostly on player preference it's the feel you're looking for the string gauge you're using and the style of music you play but usually we're anywhere between a perfectly flat fingerboard at zero to thousandths of relief up to at the high end maybe 10 or 12 thousands so I like to see it in the middle of the range somewhere in the four to six thousandth range is a nice flat neck for my style of play if I look closely here we're at just about nine and a half thousands that's a little bit more relief than I'd like to have so I'm going to tighten the truss rod nut to straighten this neck out just a little bit just a little bit at a time we'll check our relief again I love this we're sitting right at five thousandths at this point in the setup that's probably a good spot to stop we want to let this neck figure out where it settles in over the next days it's going to continue to change so we get a nice sweet spot now we know that we may have to make final adjustments as this guitar settles so our next step in the process is check the action at the nut you use a string action gauge that has thousandths of an inch you can get these in metric you can also use feeler gauges my preferred way in the process I've adapted to is using a digital nut gauge that I use for measuring both the action at the nut and the action of the 12th fret you'll also see that I'm doing something that might be considered unconventional I take a number of these measurements with the guitar laying down not in the playing position it allows me to use this dial indicator or this digital indicator in the way that works for my process if you're going to use something like a string action gauge it is great practice to do this in the playing position things change based on how you hold it so that is best practice when you're using feeler gauges or string action gauge this is a process I've adapted to and it works really well for me so let's take those measurements we can see where we're starting we zero it with a string in a neutral position then I take and gently press down on either side of the indicator and it tells me how many thousandths of an inch or between the bottom of the string and the top of the Fret that's what we call the action at the nut and I'll go through each string and write this down so we're starting right now at 32 thousandths that's wickedly high and we'll bring that down but right now just document it don't make any changes this point none of these numbers mean anything specific we haven't even done a rough setting of our action we're just documenting where we are so we can see how things change so now we're down here at the 12th fret to check the action at the 12th fret so I'm going to go across the strings check where we're at I will make an adjustment this time as we're roughing in our action the way I use the nut action gauge at the 12th fret is I press the string down against the 12th fret I zero the indicator and now I have a direct reading of my string height then down here at the bridge I'm adjusting the saddle height and seeing real time the change in my action so I'm going to go into probably 66 to 68 thousands on this low E for the first pass I'm going to move to the a string and zero it starting down at 50 I want to bring this up so we're probably at 64. this is approximating the same thing you do with the radius gauge I'm just using the nut action gauge to take that measurement there are a number of other ways including using a string action gauge to set the action at the 12th fret and you can follow your preferred method so we just made our first big adjustment of our action at the 12th fret and that can change the string tuning this is real important that you have it tuned to the pitch that you play because that affects how much tension there is on the neck and what that relief setting is back up to pitch tip the guitar up check the relief again I'll be really happy if this is right here around five thousands that's perfect so there's not going to be any other major changes to relief loosen up the strings get this pick guard put back in and secured now we're ready to get back to the nut to do our action at the nut this time we're going to take our nut files get them adjusted properly since I'm going to be filing some of the bone nut I like to put some low tack tape down over the rosewood fretboard also just a rare chance that I were to tip that net file down too far toward the headstock I put an additional piece of tape on the other side of the nut the primary tools we want to use are a set of nut files that correspond to the string gauge you use so look at how many thousands of an inch each string is and make sure you have the corresponding file there's a range of acceptable adjustments here for Action at the nut a good range to look at for your action at the nut is approximately 20 thousandths of an inch between the top of the Fret and the bottom of the string at the low E down to approximately 10 to 12 thousands at the high e so let's get into the measurements gently press down on each side of the string over the first fret so we're 32 thousands I'd like this to be much closer to 20 maybe in that twenty twenty two thousandths range it's our low E so we grab the correct nut file I pull the string gently up out of the nut slot out of the way when we're filing nut slots we want to gently tilt the file toward the peg head we'd like to roughly match the break angle of the string so I'm just going to tip this up just a little bit and take a file we want to go very easy new files like this one cut quick there also could just be glue or debris in there that's giving us High nut action so take a very light pass and start checking the impact we came down about a thousandth of an inch so I know it could be a little bit more aggressive with it I like where that low E is sitting now so I'm going to repeat that same process for each of the strings across the fretboard using the correct corresponding nut file gently working down to my target number and documenting those specs of my notebook so I've got the action at the nut set just where I like it we're now ready to move back down to the 12th fret we're back to having a few of these higher and a few lower than I like to have so now I'll go back through and make some easy adjustments to get it dialed in where I like it Okay so we've got the relief set we've got our action at the nut and we've got our action at the 12th fret so intonation is the final adjustment I do this in the standard playing position like we all do and we're comparing the open note to the 12th fret remember earlier how we use that sadomatic to approximate where one of those saddles we are almost dead on we're a few cents sharp on that g so we can talk about how to make that quick adjustment if the fretted note if the 12th fret is sharp we need to elongate the string and move the saddle back if our Friday note at the 12th fret is flat we need to shorten the string length and move the saddle forward so we need to bring that g saddle back just a hair this is a small adjustment I'm not going to loosen the string to do it we just come back of the saddle to make that string a little bit longer past the 12th fret we go clockwise and it just brings the saddle back just a hair [Music] dead on so the final adjustment we're going to talk about is pickup height and again there's a lot of variation in personal preference here too low and you'll have almost no output if you go too high with your pickups the magnetic pole can interfere with the strings and cause intonation issues or Out Of Tune sounds I suggest starting with the manufacturer's recommended pickup height it's usually a good middle ground plug into your favorite amplifier and adjust the taste there's a couple of ways we can measure our pickup height we can use a string action gauge it's easy to set it on top of the pickup and measure that height from the top of the pickup to the bottom of the string a Precision rule also works really nicely we're most often measuring this in sixty-fourths of an inch so I'll make a few adjustments as my starting point bring this side up a little bit and we'll bring the treble side up a little more too we'll use that as our starting point make a quick adjustment on my bridge pickup as well this is a really safe place to play with tonal adjustments on your guitars without even switching pickups setting pickup height can change that response and that tone [Music] dialed in I love the way this is feeling I cannot wait to get it plugged in and hear how this sounds this guitar is ready to rock hey Dan wait for me oh hey Dan welcome to Stu map man thanks for having me what about what's going on down here you're putting the parts Caster together yeah we've been putting this together showing everyone how it's done I love it oh it's been a lot of fun you want me to throw it up on the bench take a look at it that's what I brought these for get the proper inspection here wow found a few parts down the warehouse and brought a few parts from home what are those some cool vintage knobs little different style what would they have come off of I don't know maybe an old radio I think dollar sign switch tip I want to hear that TV Jones with Telly pickup yeah Eric dawa on that one he does some custom on pickups that should sound incredible I have two of these in a guitar that I built and I love this on those filter trons are pretty cool should we plug it in try it out I would love to hear I haven't heard it yet this is the first time I've plugged this in I think we should go through and make sure I got the wiring right I threw a four-way switch in it so we should have Bridge pickup foreign there's that bridge pickup that thing will get up and go both pickups in parallel like a classic Telly would have [Music] neck pickup here's that filter Tron hello [Music] thank you and then you get both in series for something a little hotter gives you a little more push it's awesome [Music] that's a pretty cool sound that's incredible Dan the guitar you're playing and glad that you showed all the audience out there how fun and how good a guitar can be when you build a parts Caster it's a really fun way to build your ideal guitar or just experiment with something new thanks for swinging by to check it out you know I wanted to and I would hang around but um I have 10 fret jobs I got to do this afternoon so I better get moving that's pretty wild that danderline stopped by to check out my parts Caster build hopefully you can see that there's so many possibilities and you found some inspiration this whole process this is the dream Telly that I've built for myself go out there and figure out what you want to build find some inspiration find some parts put it together the options are Limitless and you can keep improving and modifying Your Parts Caster too saw Bigsby around here somewhere that looks sweet I gotta get back to work foreign [Music]

Channel: StewMac

Views: 331,640

Keywords: partscaster, partscaster build, fender partscaster, fender partscaster build, fender telecaster partscaster, partscaster tele, partscaster telecaster, guitar building for beginners, guitar building, electric guitar building, how to build a partscaster, how to make a partscaster, build a partscaster, guitar making, making a guitar, making an electric guitar, luthier, lutherie, luthiery, stewmac, stewart macdonald, stewmac guitar kit build, stewmac telecaster, partscaster guitar

Id: uRzzsXHbwkk

Length: 70min 8sec (4208 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 09 2023