The Cedar bodied Telecaster saga

earwighoney

Roland said:

This is Atlantic Cedar. It's lighter and softer than Spanish Cedar, with a larger grain, and its not as strong. Still smells good though.

I had on loan a guitar which was made from Lawson's Cypress which is in the same family as Atlantic Cedar and it was the nicest smelling guitar I have ever come across.  

WezV

It doesn't matter too much exactly which it is, as long as everyone realises you are talking about a softwood and not a hardwood.


normally the names tell you it's a kinda similar wood. Spanish Cedar is an exception to that.  All Australian woods are too, the theory is they got named after similar looking trees... if you squint a bit

Roland

It's definitely a softwood, and at the soft end of the softwood scale. I'm worried about screws pulling out. So it will be through strung with a back plate, rather than ferrules, to hold the ball ends. It will also have a control plate, rather than mounting the controls directly into the body.

Roland

Today I've been routing and sanding. The Cedar is soft, and sands easily, with clean edges. Personally I like thin guitars, and my previous Telecasters have been as thin as 1 1/2", rather than the standard 1 3/4". In view of the softness I've left this one at 1 7/8", and haven't chamfered and contoured as heavily as I would like.



The wood grain is looking good/ You might notice that the body profile isn't pure Tele. The upper bout has been extended forward by about 1cm to move the guitar's hanging position. The lower horn has been cut back. It's only there to hold the guitar when sitting. So I might as well keep it away from the fretting hand. @TTony will notice that another of his spares necks on this one. I really like the Pacific neck profile, but the over long head will be reshaped.

Now I need some advice! Shall I bind the body to strengthen the edges of this soft wood, or round them over and let natural distressing take its course?

WezV

That looks great, definitely round over.


do you have any going spare?

Roland

@WezV I'd love to see what you can do with it. Would you like an 18" slab, which is wide and thick enough for a body, or a plank which would need joining? You can see the planks earlier in the thread.

WezV

A slab like you have used here would be great.  I  shall PM you

I have had a port orford cedar neck blank here for the past few years, buy can never decide what to pair it with.  Its very stuff qith a zingy ring to it.  I think a 90% softwood guitar may be on the cards

Roland

One of the marvellous things about being retired is that I can choose when to spend time in my workshop. I used to hate people like me.

This afternoon was spent finishing the drilling and routing: cavity for the electro-socket, holes for cable runs, string-through holes, round-over back and front, headstock re-profile, and then all the sanding.

This time I treated my self to some Forster bits. I've used spade bits before but, for my liking, they are too violent and liable to chip the wood. This Cedar is easily chipped. The Forstners cut like a dream. First a 3mm pilot, then 2mm deep with 22mm diameter Forstner, followed by 25mm deep with 18mm, then ream out the pilot so that it's large enough to take the wires. 


My sits in a stand, which isn't big enough to drill the bridge holes. So I clamp the stand on top of the guitar body, with adequate packing, and drill through. A 3mm brad bit seems to be the minimum diameter which won't wander. Drilled through from the front until e brad breaks the back surface. Then reverse the guitar, and finish the drilling from the back to leave clean entry and exit.


Rather than ferrules I decided to make and inset a drilled bar into the back of the guitar, which means routing a slot in the wood.


The round-over is 1/4" diameter. I'd been wondering about binding the body. Having looked at a mock up, with chrome bridge and control plates in place, I agreed with @WezV that round-over would work best. It's not really any less work than binding. Not being able to route around the chamfers means careful hand sanding to match the curves, compared with careful work with craft knife and chisel.


Sanding was easy! With basswood and pine I've had to sand, de-nib, sand, seal, sand, working up through the grades of sandpaper. The Cedar cut so cleanly than I went straight to 240, and then to 400 grade, with no need to seal. So I finished the afternoon with the first coat of Tru Oil.

NPP

Roland said:

pics to follow

yes please - looking forward to seeing your progress

Roland

Two coats of Tru Oil and we have this:


This morning I started on @WezV 's slurry treatment with Liberon wire wool. It seemed to be highlighting the grain. What I also noticed was that it was producing iron dust, which was highlighting the checking. This is where the wood had split as it dried. I knew I had checking at one end of the slab, and had purposely used it for the bridge end of the body. Seems like there's checking at the neck end too.


The good news is that I shouldn't get checking in the planks I because their end grain was sealed before they were left to dry.

Gagaryn

don't know if its just me but i can't see your images

Roland

Confession time. A while back I got two similar necks from @TTony. At the last minute I changed my mind about which one to use because the grain pattern looked better (vanity) and because I had tuners which would fit. What I didn't notice until I'd routed out the pickup cavities was that one of the necks had an undercut fretboard, and the other one didn't. Thankfully I hadn't drilled the bridge holes. I had already plugged and redrilled the neck, and drilled the body for the neck joint. Rather than redo that, and risk a weaker joint, I decided to enlarge the bridge pickup routing. Normally this would move the neck out. At the design stage I'd lengthened the upper bout to change the guitar's balance. So I've just lost this design "improvement".

The guitar is now assembled, and the neck is settling in. For pickups I've used an Oil City Hardman in the neck, and a Wrapping Wharf in the bridge. There's no pick guard, so the neck pickup bolts into a brass plate which screws into the body. The insulating tape is to stop the pickup wires shorting out.


Pots are both 250K log, with a .22 capacitor and an 003 tap. Switch is a 5 way superswitch, which Axetec have on offer. It's wired:
1. Bridge
2. Tapped bridge
3. Neck and tapped bridge
4. Neck
5. Both in serial
As you can see the volume is at the front, and selector switch at the back, which is the way I prefer it.

I'm going to test it at tonight's rehearsal.

Roland

Sound is a strange thing. What sounded well balanced in isolation, and not too dissimilar from my main guitar, turned out too warm at rehearsal. After a bit of trial and error with different settings I've disconnected the earth wire to the neck pickup cover, and removed the treble bleed capacitor.

TimberG

Nice Build Where did you get the pickup base plate from? 

WezV

Roland said:

Sound is a strange thing. What sounded well balanced in isolation, and not too dissimilar from my main guitar, turned out too warm at rehearsal.

I am a little surprised by that.   I expected it might go the other way.

Roland

@WezV  It surprised me too. When I thought about it there were three causes, and none of them was anything to do with the cedar:
1 Earthed cover on the neck pickup meant is was too muffled. 
2 Bridge pickup was set to match the muffled neck pickup volume, which meant it was too low down
3 Both pickups have more windings than those in my main guitar, which means they're not as bright

Roland

TimberG said:

Where did you get the pickup base plate from? 

It's home made. For my previous guitar build I made both brass and steel plates so that I could hear the difference, but never got around to swapping them.

I believe that @TheGuitarWeasel sells steel plates. 

Roland

Two more steps in the saga.

The good. At rehearsal still wasn't as bright as I want. This time I replaced the volume pot. Bingo! Now it's so bright that I might have to under some of my earlier changes. For now I've upped the tone cap from .22 to .47, and dropped the treble bleed cap to .001. Let's see what the next rehearsal brings before I mess with anything else.

The bad. The body is weeping, not just at the knot, but along a growth line through the middle of the wood. I'm not sure what to do about this. The Tru Oil finish is very thin. I might let it dry out over time, and hope that there's no structural failure. The slab that I used comes from low down the trunk, whereas the planks come from higher, where the grain is more even. I was planning to use a second slab next, but I'll have to look for something else. @WezV you'll need to be careful about your slab too.

WezV

I am going to do what i meant to do when i first got it - weigh it regularly  and write the weights on the wood  - to see if its still drying.   Its probably going to be at least 6 months till i build with it

Roland

Here we go again. This time I'm making a guitar for my eldest son. It will be the first with, what I hope is, properly dried wood. 

The design features on this one: First a one piece body. The body will be the modified Telecaster profile, with the extended upper bout and cut back lower horn, that I pioneered in the last build. This one will also have an angled body profile. 1.25"at the top, and 1.5" at the bottom. Pickup wise I've discovered a leaning towards the sound of low wind, weak magnet, single coils. So Oil City Californian neck and Fortyniner bridge. To cope with the thinner body, and the fact that I'm not going to use a control plate, the selector will be a Les Paul style switch, which isn't as deep as the traditional Telecaster selector switch. I'm going to try an Axesrus bridge, which has a lip around it, to see whether it's more comfortable for palm muting. This build maybe for someone else, but there's no reason not to keep trying to improve the design. As before there will be an aluminium bar in place of ferrules, and the pickups will be direct mounted to metal plates screwed to the body, and no pickguard.

 Hardware is going to be black. Is this a design consideration? Partly. I was tempted to do it last time, but the real driver is that I want to use Axesrus 1:18 tuners, and they are out of stock of the chrome. A few weeks ago someone asked about guitar parts suppliers, so for completeness I should say that I'm also using parts from Axetec and Black Dog ... and the last of the necks which I got from @TTony.