Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi, I am a newcomer who is looking at building my first guitar.

Any advice on how to get going would be greatly appreciated.I have it

in mind to build a telecaster style. thanks,Blackdawg

Welcome to the Forum.

Best advise is to visit www.stewmac.com and look at a kit. (and through their ENTIRE catalogue) The instruction booklet is a little light on detail but the DVD that comes with the kit helps to overcome the manuals short comings.

Robert

Blackdawg,

Do you want to build the Tele from a pre-made body and neck, or entirely from scratch?

The body is actually easy enough if you have any tools. It's nice to have a set of plans to go by, so you can get pickup position right, neck pocket right, etc. You can get routing templates for the pickup cavities and the neck pocket from Stewart MacDonald (link at top), as well as all the needed miscellaneous parts. The S-M neck pocket template seems to give a slightly oversized neck pocket compared to a standard neck heel. You can compensate for this with a little tape on the template or pattern-following bit's bearing, or make the heel a little bigger than nominal if you are making your own neck.

The list of things to cover goes on, so I'll shut up and listen to you instead

By the way, one thing to ask yourself is whether you are building the guitar in order to get an instrument that is unique in some way (i.e., something you can't buy with a Fender decal on it), or if it's a stock standard Tele and you want to build one of those just because. The reason to address this question is that you are going to spend more money than a standard instrument would cost to go and buy, unless you are talking about duplicating a Custom Shop instrument or something more in that price range.

I tried posting a pic of my #1, but there are still problems with this? (I must have missed the instructions on how to get around this problem).

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

Jim,

Just thought I'd chime in and say that if you want to post pics you can open a free account at photobucket.com.
Upload your pics to your page on photo bucket.com and then on the forum you can add a hyperlink to the photo (on the forum, the hyperlink is the fourth icon from the left (right next to the underline icon). Once you click that button, you just go to your photobucket page where it shows the picture and you copy and paste the link labeled for forum use and paste it in the area of the window that pops up when you press the hyperlink button. Once you click "OK" it will then want you to post the url address where the picture is located, this address is also found under the picture on your photobucket page called something like "url address". Just copy and paste it and you're set. Just keep in mind that if you move or delete the pictures from your photo bucket page, they will no longer show up on the forum unless you specify the new links.

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Thanks,
Blain

http://www.ullrichguitar.com

"89.67% of all statistics are made up on the spot."