The Birth of StraTele - with Pics!

Solid Body Love Songs · **Posted:** Thu Aug 18, 2011 8:43 pm

Cool thread CR. Great pics.

Drew365 · **Posted:** Thu Aug 18, 2011 8:47 pm

That's the way the HB's are normally set. So, we all want to know, how's it sound? A little sound clip would be nice. You know what they say, no sound clip, the mod didn't happen.
This looks like it was a fun project for you, plus you get to keep a cool guitar at the end. Win, win.

TimDrakeMusic · **Posted:** Thu Aug 18, 2011 10:18 pm

A very nice, speedy surgery indeed CR. Looks great, and I bet it sounds great also!

CRGuitarMan · **Joined:** Sat Sep 08, 2007 9:46 pm **Posts:** 2041

Thank you, gents, for your interest in this minor build. StraTele is alive and well, finished for the time being and ready to rock. I am packing for a camping trip with grandsons aged 7 and 9, so I won't be posting for a while, but I will return eventually if I survive the camping extravaganza on the shores of Lake Superior.

Once I had her strung and dialed in, it took very little work to get the action nice and low. I didn't even have to tweak the neck, it seemed to be right where it was when I pulled it off that Tele, can't tell it's on a whole new guitar. Once I had her set up and tuned I played it for a good solid hour, then forced myself to hang her on the wall and get on to other things.

As far as sound, at this point I am very pleased with the range and tone of the two pickups, though I'm not quite sure if I'm 100% happy with the switch in the middle position - the tone seems to favor the neck pickup a little more than I would like. I have plenty of time to adjust pickup heights after the camping trip, so final adjustments and tweaking will have to wait until then. I'm looking forward to it.

When I'm home and recovered from the camping trip (the grandsons are more than excited) I will try to do a little recording and/or video shooting and post same as a fitting end to this thread. I hope you enjoyed the journey - I know I did. There's a little more to this story. There's that Strat neck to be dealt with and there are actually TWO Tele bodies in the morgue at the moment, but more on that later. For now, here's a final pic - but it does not represent the final outcome.

FenderGuy1 · **Joined:** Tue May 31, 2011 2:39 am **Posts:** 342

i love the way the strat neck is on the Tele u should have put the Tele bridge pickup in the Strat and the tele neck pickup too and make it a Strat body but tele electronics and strat controls

super kud · **Posted:** Fri Aug 19, 2011 8:32 am

CRGuitarMan wrote:

Thank you, gents, for your interest in this minor build. StraTele is alive and well, finished for the time being and ready to rock. I am packing for a camping trip with grandsons aged 7 and 9, so I won't be posting for a while, but I will return eventually if I survive the camping extravaganza on the shores of Lake Superior.

Once I had her strung and dialed in, it took very little work to get the action nice and low. I didn't even have to tweak the neck, it seemed to be right where it was when I pulled it off that Tele, can't tell it's on a whole new guitar. Once I had her set up and tuned I played it for a good solid hour, then forced myself to hang her on the wall and get on to other things.

As far as sound, at this point I am very pleased with the range and tone of the two pickups, though I'm not quite sure if I'm 100% happy with the switch in the middle position - the tone seems to favor the neck pickup a little more than I would like. I have plenty of time to adjust pickup heights after the camping trip, so final adjustments and tweaking will have to wait until then. I'm looking forward to it.

When I'm home and recovered from the camping trip (the grandsons are more than excited) I will try to do a little recording and/or video shooting and post same as a fitting end to this thread. I hope you enjoyed the journey - I know I did. There's a little more to this story. There's that Strat neck to be dealt with and there are actually TWO Tele bodies in the morgue at the moment, but more on that later. For now, here's a final pic - but it does not represent the final outcome.

What does the the switch do?

Negative Creep · **Joined:** Sat Nov 20, 2010 2:16 pm **Posts:** 881

CRGuitarMan wrote:

Once I refigured the opening I needed, I quickly did some more wood removal and finally had a hole that would accommodate that pesky humbucker. That extra chunk removed from the far side had to be taken out to allow the wiring from the humbucker to get out of the way of the pickguard. Not the prettiest excavation, but it did the trick. I had to bore a couple of small holes (don't really show, but they're there) near the center of the cavity to allow the humbucker screws the depth they required to get out of the way. Nothing was quite deep enough, but when all was said and done, the pickups fit perfectly and the trimmed pickguard lined up with the appropriate screw holes.

After I swapped all the electronics from the W-B-W pickguard to the white pearloid, it was time to set the whole works in place and screw it all down. Happily, everything went well, including the soldering of lead wires to the output jack. Test tapping on the pickups told me that everything was still wired right and the StraTele was good to go. All it needed now was a nice set of strings, in this case a set of DR-TITE FIT 9-46 for that little extra bottom end I like for surf tones. I know, I know - humbuckers for surf tones..? But she was definitely looking good!

Wish you a safe trip, great work

	Page 2 of 2	[ 22 posts ]	Go to page Previous 1, 2
Go to page Previous 1, 2

	Page 2 of 2	[ 22 posts ]	Go to page Previous 1, 2
Go to page Previous 1, 2

Andorra	EN	ES	FR
Belgium	EN	DE	FR
Croatia	EN
Czech Republic	EN
Estonia	EN
France	EN	FR
Germany	EN	DE
Italy	EN	IT
Latvia	EN
Lithuania	EN
Malta	EN
Netherlands	EN
Poland	EN
Romania	EN
Slovakia	EN
Sweden	EN
United Kingdom	EN

Austria	EN	DE
Bulgaria	EN
Cyprus	EN
Denmark	EN
Finland	EN
Greece	EN
Hungary	EN
Ireland	EN
Liechtenstein	EN	DE
Luxembourg	EN	DE	FR
Monaco	EN	FR
Norway	EN
Portugal	EN
Slovenia	EN
Spain	EN	ES
Switzerland	EN	DE	FR	IT

Mod Shop

Custom Shop

The Birth of StraTele - with Pics!

Who is online