Official Luthiers Forum!

Hey guys, my usual haunt is the acoustic forum. Have a friend who wants me to rout a telecaster body, but do it from the backside. Install strat 3 pickups. Leave top unblemished (no plastic pick guard). Plus, strat style bridge where strings feed from back (?? hard tail??) . Clearly, unfamiliar with terms and lingo. But I've built dozens of acoustics. So I have some skills. Looking for routing templates. Also, I will be doing all of the finish work. So, if your interested in helping me, post away!

Thanks,

Mike

I have scale drawings you can use to make your own templates from lexan sheet.

_________________
Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

I always recommend getting a copy of Melvyn Hiscock's book Make Your Own Electric Guitar for a variety of reasons. He covers almost every aspect of electric guitar construction - materials, geometry, wiring, finish - he builds three different instruments with different neck joints to show how to do each. He also has full size drawings for most pickups in the back of the book - copy them and make your own templates as Brian suggested from lexan or plywood.

Strat and tele plans are available on the internet - if you get both you can combine the pickups of one with the shape of the other (a minor but important consideration is to stay with a traditional shape that will fit a standard case).

One of the biggest differences is to worry about the geometry and location of all of the parts as you build - you don't get to move the bridge around like you can with an acoustic. I recently had to help a friend out who had built a bolted neck guitar with a ToM bridge - he got the neck pocket wrong and was at the end of the travel of his bridge when he tried to do the setup. Hiscock and a good set of plans will cover all of that.

Like you, I'm mostly an acoustic guy but I have built a few electrics including this tele clone

http://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/for ... barncaster

Free drawings for a telecaster can be found at the telecaster forum. You can make a template from that. You can measure the bridge location with a rule or a saddlematic (fit the neck first). To make it so you don't have a control plate or plastic pickguard, you can make up a couple of templates to access the controls from the rear. I didn't have anything to go by, I just did it...

_________________
Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

I've had good luck with Guitar Building templates

http://www.guitarbuildingtemplates.com/Shop-now.html

_________________
https://www.instagram.com/fostinoguitars/
https://www.facebook.com/PuraVidaUkuleles/

Here ya go. You can download full scale plans in a pdf format and make your own templates........It's in German but the File names are in English.
You can print out the pdf file on any printer as long as you have the printer set up to do a "Tile" print and set the print job "To Scale"

http://www.gitarrebassbau.de/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6

Fender Guitars are about halfway down the page

Ugh... I meant stratocaster. But thanks!!