My third electric - the Pinecaster

Sorry, this is out of order because I inadvertently deleted the entire post while trying to edit a photo.

My third electric was my first build with all the individual parts sourced separately. I had been reading in the Telecaster Discussion Page forum about pine bodies (most Teles are ash or alder) and thought I would give that a try. I bought the body from Wood Tone Bodies - got a great price for one of their "butcher block" style 9 piece tops. I also wanted a quality neck with a shape and radius (7.25) the same as my blond '72. The SX I modded has a radius of 12 - the bigger the number the flatter the fret board. The neck for the pinecaster is an All Parts TMO bought from Mark at MJW Customs who does a superb job of leveling frets, lubing the truss rod, etc so it is ready to play right out of the box (after applying the finish of course).

I thought finshing a pine body would be a piece of cake. There were some wonderful examples of shellac finish on pine guitars on the Telecaster site and that is what I decided on. I first tried to use Zinsser amber shellac that I bought in a can at my local hardware store. Not having a clue what I was doing the first coat got very sticky during the application - there was no wet edge like you get during painting or staining. It's hard to imaging it looking any worse after the first coat. It was all blotchy and uneven and the amber was a little too orangy for my liking. I did some more research and learned a couple of things. I used waxed shellac but should have used de-waxed (leaves lots more options for clear coating), I applied it straight from the can but should have cut the mix, and, most importantly, that shellac has a shelf life. I turned the can of Zinsser over and it had an expiration date of Nov 2005. I guess its not a steady mover at Ace Hardware. At least they gave me my money back.

So I put the shellac idea on the back burner. I had several cans of MinWax from various refinishing projects and started mixing and matching until I had a color I like, a sort of blond/tobacco color. I sanded off the shellac and applied the stain concoction using standard wood staining technique, wiped on about 20 coats of MinWax wipe on poly and was all set. I wanted the neck to contrast the body so I left the maple its natural color and just used the wipe on poly. Totally satisfied with both the body and the neck.

I had also done a lot of reading on TDPRI about pickups. There are a lot of superior quality "boutique" pickups made by smaller shop builders available. You can really spend a bundle if you want to. I didn't want to. I decided to go with Bill Lawrence's Keystones. After hearing all the sound clips they were just the perfect combination of tone and value. I heard that due to some health issues there could be a long wait or lost orders but my order was turned around in just two weeks.

Everything else was sourced over the net. The tuners, neck plate and control plate came from a seller who parts out new Fenders. Electronics, compenstated saddles and most of the other parts came from Guitar Parts Resource. 

The assembly was pretty straightforward. I used the American Standard Tele wiring configuration. And everything went together nicely. However, as I was stringing it up for the first time something about the neck looked odd. I got the blond '72, eyeballed it and noticed right away the neck didn't sit as deep in the pocket on piney. I did some more research, got out the calipers and learned that the pine body was routed correctly but the specs had changed. I much preferred the deeper pocket so did a quick rout job on piney and was all set. I actually went a tad deep and one playing card shim set it right.

Set up and intonation went very quickly - love the compensated saddles - and I was ready to play.

I didn't take many photos during the build but here's the raw body and the final Home Built Pinecaster:

Routing the deeper neck pocket:

The parts:

Bill Lawrence Keystone pickups - sorry for the fuzzy pic

Wiring it up.

My fifth electric - the Kellycaster Deluxe

Fender Telecaster '72 Deluxe. 1972 Fender release two new models of the Telecaster - the Thinline and the Deluxe. I am building a replica of the Deluxe.

My attempt at a burst finish. I was going for amber fade to black. I'm fairly happy how it turned out. As with all my builds the flaws give it character!!!

I wanted the neck to have the same amber as the body. This I'm not so crazy about. It's a little too orangey for me. Not quite sure what to do. I don't want to strip and redo. Maybe it will grow on me. I do love the rosewood fret board.

On this one I'm trying to use Fender parts if I could find them:

Pickups installed. These are Fender Wide Range Humbuckers - a big diversion from the standard single coil that Fender is so famous for. The experts/purists say the new ones don't sound as good as the originals from the seventies. They're right, I've heard both. But I got these for $80 for both and I've seen the originals selling for as much as $350 each. I think I made the right call.

and wired:

My fourth electric - the Capecaster

So now I had three electric guitars but I also had a bad case of GAS. Thats GAS as in Guitar Acquisition Syndrome. Unfortunately there is only one cure - yep, another guitar. I wanted something different from the Teles but wasn't quite sure. One day I came across a post on a guitar forum from a guy who was trying to duplicate one of the Fender classic colors from the 50's when they matched some of the more popular car colors, especially GM cars. Some excellant colors - picture a '57 Chevy in Lake Placid Blue or Foam Green with the contrasting white and all that chrome steel. I found a Fender color chart and it only took a split second to find the perfect color for me - Surf Green - and it had to go on a Stratocaster.

I had GAS bad but I wanted this guitar to be serviceable but cheap. Not cheap, piece of crap, but dirt cheap, inexpensive. I would source all the parts on line but nothing new and I would force myself to keep looking until I found the absolute lowest price possible. My top line was $200 total.

Step one was to find a body. You can easily pay over $200 for a Strat body and its not hard to find them in excess of $500. Way too high. I set a budget of $75 and was determined to get it. I looked and I bid and got out bid and I looked some more and bid some more and got out bid some more. I wasn't even in the ball park when these auctions were over. Maybe my price was totally unrealistic. I was looking at spending more than my budget on just the body. Well, if I said it once I said it a thousand times, timing is everything. I found a body on eBay that wasn't tracking like most of the others. The price was low and it stayed low. I kept checking back and kept wondering what was wrong with this picture. Sure the guitar was hideous but it was a strat. Patience was a virtue. I sniped in at the last second and won the auction at $39. Yes, $39. However, in addition to believing timing is everything I also believe you get what you pay for.

This guitar began life as a not very attractive Cherry Burst Starcaster. Note I said STARcaster not STRATOcaster. Starcasters are Fenders low end intro guitars that come in a package with an amp and shoulder strap and maybe a gig bag, I'm not sure. They sell at Target and Costco type of stores. I think they go for $129. So now my $39 didn't look like i got a steal, it looked like I got a robbed. Sometimes that is what you get on eBay - an unethical seller who advertises something that it isn't. And in reality, although there is an appeal process, its all over the net and its all anonymous and its designed to frustrate you so you just give up. For $39 I decided to just give up. I gave the seller a bad rating and wished him all kinds of bad karma.

The body wasn't really bad it just wasn't a Strat and when I stripped the burst I could tell it wasn't alder as advertised it was basswood. As I have since learned basswood is an acceptable tonewood for electric guitars. It is softer that alder or ash but a little lighter too I think. Apparently it's main drawback is it dents and scratches more easily. So, ok, basswood is not a deal breaker. Phew...

In an effort to get my blonde tele to look a little more original I took out the humbucker pickup that had been installed in the middle area. I think that in the mid to late 70's when Jimmy Page was the rage lots of single coil pickup guitars got fitted with humbuckers in an effort to get that more distorted Led Zep sound. But on a blonde tele it just wasn't right. I took the bucker off and decided to use it on the bridge of the strat.

Once I had the body stripped and painted - I used Krylon Satin Jade enamel spray paint and two cans of clear coat - the rest fell into place. I bought a cheap - both cost and quality - made in Korea neck off ebay. It wasn't worth the $10.50 I paid. But soon after I got a Squire Strat neck that is perfect. Assembly and wiring went very quickly and now I have my surf green Strat. Dick Dales I'm not but I can always dream. Total price excluding shipping fees was around $165.

The pictures don't really do it justice - its a little more green than blue.

My second electric - the Kellycaster

For a while I had been thinking about getting a second electric. I was listening to a lot of open tunings - Black Crowes, Ry Cooder, the Stones - and didn't like constantly retuning. I had joined a Telecaster forum on the internet - TDPRI - and red a lot of complimentary reviews about SX guitars. A guy named Kurt in New Hampshire was importing them and selling them on his Rondomusic.com site. The SX style went for $129 with occasional deals for $109. Kurt had constantly changing deals which encouraged frequent visits to his site and April of 2009 I think it was there was the SX STL-50 in Candy Apple Red sitting there for $89, $104 including shipping to my door.

Well, sure I wanted another guitar but all the posts on TDPRI of guitar building and modding had really intrigued me. There was no way I was going to leave this one stock so I bought new pickups, electronics, saddles, tuners and a pickguard and went to town. I decided to switch the neck pickup to a humbucker so I could get that Micawber sound. Oh, and of course the headstock had to be cut down to match a Tele.

(pay no attention to the dates on the pics - not being able to figure out how to reset them is a testament to my ignorance of most things technological)

The actual work was fairly uneventful, more like an installation than anything. I learned how to wire and solder and tweak different capacitors for different tones. The final product:

Although I enjoyed the modding experience this is not a guitar I would have bought in store. It looked good and sounded good but didn't really fit me. The neck is wide and kind of flat - good for shredding - but not good for my smaller hands and short fingers. Seems like I still needed a second guitar!!!

My first electric - Kelly's Tele

After college I moved to NYC where I spent a lot of time with my sister Martha, my brother-in-law Mike and a little bit of time with a band they were managing, The Drongos. It was hard to go home and strum my acoustic to Bob Dylan and finger pick blues classics after hanging out with the band in clubs like Tin Pan Alley, CBGBs and Irving Plaza. I needed a change - I needed to go electric. 1982 in NYC was a great place to look for a guitar. Right on 48th street was Manny's and Sam Ash, In the village you had Matt Uminov and ??? (can't remember). There were literally hundreds of guitars in these stores and great players just hanging out jamming. It was very intimidating for a hack like me to go into this scene and have everyone watching and listening while I squeaked through the opening riff of Sunshine of Your Love. I never got to the point where a had a selection to choose from that I knew was right for me.

I did know that I wanted a Telecaster. There was the famous red Telecaster that belonged to the Yardbirds that Clapton, Beck and Page all played while they were with the band. There was the Muddy Waters Tele. David Gilmour played one. Andy Summers played one. Sprinsteen had his Esquire. All the country players used one. And of course Keith Richards had Micawber. We all know timing is everything in life. Around this time The Drongos had a little influx of cash which allowed them, among other things, to upgrade their equipment. Jeanne McAlister, rythm guitar, keyboards and singer had a kind of beat up Tele that had been modded with a humbucker installed in the middle position. It was pretty dinged up. Well with the new funds Jeanne bought a Stratocaster and guess who bought her Tele?

My second acoustic

So the Yamaha served me well for a couple of years but when I transfered to Louisville I really started getting into playing. I was ready to upgrade. High end guitars were totally out of my price range but I heard about a Japanese company, Takamine, that was producing mid-range knock offs of the classic Martin styles. A close friend was looking to buy as well so sometime in the Spring of 1997 we went to a music store in a strip center on Preston Hughway, I think, and each bought new Takamines. I think I paid $225 for an F360s. It sounded great in the store and 33 years later it sounds even better. It has aged beautifully with the soundboard taking on a really nice amber cast. Unfortunately is has seen it share of knocks but I guess that adds to its character. Although I didn't notice it at the time the serial # is 77010101, which I understand means it was the first guitar built the first day of the first month in 1977. Pretty cool. Two years later Martin won a patent infringement lawsuit against Takamine. Although they are still in business they were forced to change the type face of their logo so it wasn't so Martin like. So in addition to its cool serial # it is also pre-lawsuit which adds to its collectibility.

My first acoustic

My dad bought this guitar for me when I came home for Christmas my freshman year college. He was fairly skeptical about my commitment so I picked out the cheapest guitar in the store, a Yamaha 3/4 size steel string acoustic. It actually proved to be a great starter guitar. It has very light action, a comfortable reach and I didn't have to reach around a D style body.