Official Luthiers Forum!

Can anyone offer some advice for sourcing a body and neck for a Tele? I know theres alot of shops on Ebay, but I was hoping maybe one of you folks may have somthing or can steer me in the right direction.
Any advice on building would be appraciate, it my first solid body build

you just want to assemble one? Not build it yourself?

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Brock, I would rather assemble one right now, not sure I have the no-how to create from scratch. I'm sure I can carve a body from a blank of wood but the neck and pocket look to be a real challenge?

If a muppet like me can do it........

Stew-mac and warmoth have all the bitsd& bobs, though to be honest, in your position I'd get a squier tele and mod the life out of it.

I did this with several strats before I started building from scratch

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My soundclick xx luthier blog xx luthier soundclick

Good point, but are the Squire bodies and necks inferior to the US or Mexican? Onviously I can change the tuners, electronics and such, but nopt sure if the finishes are as good and the body and neck?

There is an outfit on the web selling routing templates for tele's strats etc. (their URL is escaping me at the moment), but they sell the neck and body templates. Once you route it they fit together very well.

I think you could handle it if you had these and wanted to tackle the project.

The toughest thing to do on a tele is drill the string ferrule holes straight, and with the proper method that is a snap too.

Otherwise, I would go to Stewmac for the parts. Their stuff is nice and they offer some levels of support.

:-)

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

I have a set of these, they are nice.

http://www.guitarbuildingtemplates.com/teletemplates.htm

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

I have those too Brock, and they are awesome! Now if I could get time to get in the shop...

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http://www.presnallguitars.com

Those templates look fantastic. Sweet.

If you want to assemble it, Warmoth is popular...but I would get your
body and neck from http://www.usacustomguitars.com/

Their bodies have a strong rep for being light and resonant, which just
adds more dimension to the sound of these guitars.

I bought a body and neck from Warmoth four or five years ago. While I
don't have complaints, I do wish I had known about these guys at the
time. It'd be that much better.

If you just want to assemble one check out the Saga TC-10 kits on eBay for about $100.

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Chris Nielsen
Soquel, CA.

Crowduck, is the quality good?

af_one,

I have only bought the Saga mandolin kit which is the same as the International Vilolin mando kit. My Saga mando kit is good quality for the price of about $120.

You might check the user reviews at harmony central. There are several pages by people who have built the Saga kits. Seems like most folks replace the tuners, and sometimes PUP's. The newer kits are now suppossed to come with snap together wiring requiring no soldering. If you're like me and want something to get your feet wet w/o drowning in a scratch project or spending lots of $$'s this looks like a readonable deal for $100. I'm probably going to get one myself soon.

Another angle is to buy something complete and cheap, then modify it. I recently bought a '51 Squire on clearance at MusciansFriend for $99 with free shipping. It's similar to a Tele and has gotten good reviews. I'm planning on modding it for fun and interest.

CrowDuck

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Chris Nielsen
Soquel, CA.

Grizzly sells kits for flame top telecasters. They are about 300 or so I think. I have a buddy that swears by the Samba pickups from Grizzly.

Blake

Warmoth makes nice necks - I have a Warmoth neck with an ebony fingerboard on one Tele. I'd hard pressed to convince myself to buy a body (particularly a solid one), since you can whip one of those out in about a day.

Jim

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

allparts

Everyone says the Melvin Hiscock [sp?] book on building an electric is very good. Haven't looked at it myself.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

[QUOTE=Howard Klepper] Everyone says the Melvin Hiscock [sp?] book on building an electric is very good. Haven't looked at it myself.[/QUOTE]

It is to electrics what the Cumpiano & Natelson book is to flat tops - the #1 place to start. It is definitely worth getting.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

I built a Saga tele kit last summer and It is just okay. The problem is tht I
can't get it to intonate correctly, close but not quite right. The body is
basswood and is light and pretty resonant.