The top edge of my tele got chipped and dented by a flying mic stand at a gig the other day, and concequently every gig since i've cut up my arm whilst playing on the paint chip and splinters. The gash is about an inch and a half long so it needs to go cause i'd rather my guitar wasnt covered in blood after every gig.

So, a friend of a friend etc is a dab hand with a spray gun and has sprayed a fair few guitars rather well so he's offered to give it a go over.

I was wondering whether adding a forearm contour (similar to a strat) was just a case of sanding it down to a point i'm happy with?

any pointers on doing this? I'll probably be refinishing the whole guitar so any pointers on that too?

zenguitar?

thanks in advance

Just for the sake of completeness, if you get a big chip in a guitar with a polyester finish you can fill it with nail varnish. If you want to make it less visible, take the guitar (or a piece that has chipped away) down to your local shop and find the best colour match. Carefully paint a couple of layers in the chip in the colour nail varnish, allowing plenty of time for it to fully dry between coats. Then switch to clear nail varnish to build of the finish, again making sure it has plenty of time to dry between applications. With a little patience you can make a very good repair that can be close to invisible.

If your friend is confident enough to spray, and you are happy with the examples of his work you have seen, then go for the forearm contour if you want. It's your guitar to do whatever you want with. However I would caution against the contour if your telecaster is bound, cutting a new binding channel around a forearm contour isn't the easiest job on planet luthiery.

If you are going ahead I would recommend completely stripping the old finish from the guitar. Most colour coats change depending on the colour of the undercoat and primer, as you will be going back to bare wood in shaping the contour it could be a real pain to identify the right colours for the primer and undercoat to get a good match. So +1 to a complete refinish if you are going in that direction.

Paint strippers are fine, but messy and take a long time to clean up. I personally prefer to use a scraper to remove the old finish, or remove the bulk with a sander of some sort and then finish up with a scraper. Be careful when working around the neck pocket, you don't want to do any damage in that area. And when you remove the hardware and electrics, make sure you make a note of oh the strings are grounded through the bridge and make 100% certain that you don't forget to refit it when you put it all back together.

Andy

--------------------
When the going gets weird, the Weird turn Pro.

Quote zenguitar:

---

If your friend is confident enough to spray, and you are happy with the examples of his work you have seen, then go for the forearm contour if you want. It's your guitar to do whatever you want with. However I would caution against the contour if your telecaster is bound, cutting a new binding channel around a forearm contour isn't the easiest job on planet luthiery.

---

Thanks for the thorough reply! I was counting on your input!

The chap has been spraying cars and whatever else for the best part of 30 years and has all the gear so I'm pretty confident in his ability (otherwise I wouldnt dream of it!)

I doesnt have binding so that shouldnt be a problem, but I'll be careful around the neck pocket!

I'm also going to fit new pick guard, the tele hybrid shape so I'll need to fill the old holes so stripping it all back is the best bet I think.

I might use this opportunity to do the mods I've wanted to do for a while, fit a p90 in the neck, change the tone to a seperate volume so I have one for each pickup.

Do you know of anywhere that would do a tele controll plate to fit 2 knobs and a gibson style pickup switch? they feel more rubust to me.

I'll post pictures up of my tinkering if anyone is interested?

Cheers Andy

Always happy to contribute

There are some VERY good car sprayers out there, but spraying cars is very different from spraying guitars. Cars need thick coats to protect them from the rigours of all weathers with dirt and grim at speeds of over 100MPH, but guitars need thin coats that offer protection, but don't seal them in a thick coating of polyester that damps the body and stops it from resonating properly. To give you an idea, when I was taught to spray a guitar we would put on between 20 and 30 coats and the total thickness was thinner than a single coat on a car. As long as you make it clear to your paint guy that you need to keep the overall thickness of paint down to those levels, he should do just fine.

And it's always good to take the opportunity to try some different mods too. P90's work well in tele's, and this is the perfect opportunity to do the routing required to fit one. Another option might be to look at a P90 in a humbucker size package, or at least rout for a humbucker, as that will give you more options in the future for the same amount of work now.

Off the top of my head I can't think of a tele control plate replacement drilled for a 3 way toggle. Mechanically the tele style switch is just as robust as a Gibson style toggle, and it does offer more flexibility in wiring (and a 5 way 4 pole switch will drop in with minor woodwork to the control cavity and give loads of extra wiring options). However, a Les Paul style toggle should drop in with a little woodwork in the cavity and leave enough room on a tele plate for 2 volumes and a Master Tone. You could probably do the same with an SG style angled toggle but it might leave the 3 controls a little tight together, but it would work fine with 2 volumes and no tone. And stacked pots might give you more options too, so you aren't totally tying your hands if you go that route.

Your painter should be able to help you here, he probably knows a few local machine shops who could make a custom plate for you using the existing tele plate as a template. Even if you need it polished and plated it could work out a lot cheaper than you might think. You often find that the guys in the workshop are genuinely interested because they've never done anything for a guitar before.

And if you have any more questions, just ask.

Andy

--------------------
When the going gets weird, the Weird turn Pro.

I recently installed a pair of p90s by harmonic design that fit perfectly in a tele without any routing, and sound sublime.

I went for a super chrome at the neck and a Super 90 at the bridge.

http://www.harmonicdesign.net/allpages/teles.html

Worth a look maybe.

Thanks Robin, consider the page bookmarked

Andy

--------------------
When the going gets weird, the Weird turn Pro.

A bit off topic and i wish i knew more about this custom built Tele



The guy who owned it is in a 50's style rockabilly band and boy did it sound beautiful, the twang of a tele but warmer.

--------------------
I eat kebabs when i'm sober!

Well, it would have been nice to see the headstock too for some extra clues, but looking closely at the pic...

Quilted maple body, could be solid maple body, could be a cap on something like mahogany. The bridge is very similar to that fitted to Bigsby equipped Vox guitars like the Teardrop and Phantom. The bridge pick-up surround looks like a common aftermarket part.

Looks well made and well finished by someone who knows what they are doing, and most of the hardware looks as though it could have come from Brandoni's.

Does that help?

Andy

--------------------
When the going gets weird, the Weird turn Pro.

Thanks for the tips regarding the paint thickness andy, will pass that on to him!

I've already got 2 humbuckers in it, so I was thinking a p90 in the neck would compliment it and look pretty cool. I've got a seymore Duncan blackback at the bridge which is pretty full on so I was wanting something in the neck that I can switch to for really nice clean tones, any ideas? And I'm assuming with the soap bar style I'd have to screw it straight into the body with some springs or something?

In terms of controlls I rarely use tone knobs, I like to back off the volume for different sounds but fitting a boost circuit might be quite fun. How easy is that to do? Would it require batteries etc?

Thanks again! I gig pretty regularly so I want to get the mods all planned out before I start cause I'll need to do it fairly quickly!

Quote zenguitar:

---

Just for the sake of completeness, if you get a big chip in a guitar with a polyester finish you can fill it with nail varnish. If you want to make it less visible, take the guitar (or a piece that has chipped away) down to your local shop and find the best colour match. Carefully paint a couple of layers in the chip in the colour nail varnish, allowing plenty of time for it to fully dry between coats. Then switch to clear nail varnish to build of the finish, again making sure it has plenty of time to dry between applications. With a little patience you can make a very good repair that can be close to invisible.

---

And here's one I prepared earlier !
The two bottles are nail polish for my 15-year-old Squier Vista Series Musicmaster bass ;



--------------------
Music is it's own reward .

Hi PP,

pick-ups are always a matter of taste, but I would suggest Bare Knuckle would be a good starting point. Here's a link to their P90 in Humbucker size package. They also make standard size P90's too.

The reason I suggested them is that they have a very good reputation for both their pick-ups and their customer support. They are always very willing to discuss options over the phone, and if you tell them what your bridge pick-up is and what kind of sounds you want they are generally pretty good at guiding you to the best option in their range for your needs.

If you go soap bar style you might need a foam pad under the pick-up, that usually does a better job than springs (on a soap bar the two screws are between the 2nd & 3rd string poles and 3rd & 4th string poles rather than at the ends). With a dog ear style springs would be fine, although I would also consider foam as well to help keep the pick-up level. If you go the humbucker route you have lots of options depending on whether you use a scratchplate or not.

I wouldn't bother with a boost circuit. They need batteries, so you will either be constantly removing the scratchplate/control cover to replace batteries, or you need to route for and fit a battery compartment. Boost circuits do nothing that can't be done better with a boost/EQ pedal.

If you don't find much use for tone controls it might be worth looking at changing capacitor and/or pot values, that will change the roll off frequency and slope. With a little experimentation you should find a combination that makes the tone control useful for you.

Other options include a treble bleed circuit on the volume control, it's very simple (a 150k resistor and a 0.001uf capacitor wired in parallel between the input and output of the volume pot) and it lets a small amount of high frequencies bypass the volume pot so that when you turn the volume down the tone doesn't get muddy. Early teles had a 4 way selector, and you can use the same to add a simple option that can be quite effective. You can add a capacitor to the 4 way switch so that you get the following options - bridge, bridge & neck, neck, neck + capacitor in series - a capacitor in series with the pick-up makes the pick-up sound brighter and Geddy Lee uses this trick on his Rickenbacker basses. A capacitor value of 0.0033uf or 0.0022uf would be a good starting point for experimenting here.

Generally, placing resistors and/or capacitors and/or inductors in series or parallel with pick-up coils will change the height and frequency of the pick-up's resonant peak which in turn changes the sound of the pick-up. Using toggle switches, push/pull switches, or multi-pole pick-up selectors allows you to select varies combinations to give you a greater variety of tones from 2 or 3 pick-ups and these are genuinely different tones, more like a different pick-up than EQing the output from the fitted pick-ups. However, there is no simple way to do it. Because the component values will vary depending on the electrical characteristics of your pick-ups it's not possible to produce a plug in module or pre-wired switch you can easily swap in. It's a matter of trial and error.

I'm looking at doing a few experiments in the future, maybe build a little test chassis with a breadboard and mounts for pots & switches and screw terminals to bring out the pick-up wires. Then It would be possible to try out circuits and swap out components in the breadboard rather than going crazy with the soldering iron.

If you can get these circuits right, they are very powerful for gigging players.

Andy

--------------------
When the going gets weird, the Weird turn Pro.

Hey!! Looking good Dave.

If it's not too late... resist the temptation to dive in with the nail polish. Looks like the original paint has a nice layer of grime that needs to come off.

Get busy with the White Spirit

Andy

--------------------
When the going gets weird, the Weird turn Pro.

Thanks Andy , but that's not grime , it is where the Seafoam Green had faded greener over the years . I had already de-waxed with lighter fluid , wet-sanded with 1200 wet-and-dry and a flat block , then polished by hand with metal polish and 0000 grade wire wool . It had had buckle rash down to the wood about the size of a postage stamp on the back which I had used the nail polish for , so I took all the surface scratches out while I was about it . A previous owner had fitted the non-standard EMG pickup .

( Off-topic ; One day I'll start a new thread in the Keyboards section when I take the 117-year-old "bench" in the pics apart . And then there's still my Dilruba to be restrung ... )

--------------------
Music is it's own reward .

Yep, you've done it all Dave, but it still looks weird!!! LOL. Even the scratchplate! Looks like heavy nicotine stain. Still you can't argue with what's there.

Happy filling

Andy

--------------------
When the going gets weird, the Weird turn Pro.