My Tele project

[axisus]

Fishing around in the loft recently I came across an old hohner body/neck that I got about 25 years ago. The whole thing was a wreck, having been (mostly) sanded down, covered in varnish by paintbrush and roughly routed for 2 humbuckers. The frets had been totally flattened off in the middle. At the time it was too much of a job for me, but now I'm (a lot!) older it is just my kind of thing. My plan is to get a relic-type look as I'm a big fan of that sort of thing.

A pre-start picture




Here's the neck minus frets, and sanded to remove all the old (flaky) varnish



Sanded neck and frets installed, trimmed to size but not rounded off




Body sanded here, holes filled, and quick test assembly. Pots and wire from my stash of bits, as was BK piledriver pup and Kinman HB. Aged Wilkinson bridge plate bought for £20. Can't be seen here, but I found an old control plate in chrome and sanded it off with wet & dry to give it a dull metal look.




The neck in the previous pic looked too 'new' for my tastes, so here it is with a bit of 'aged' colouring and also about 8 coats of tru-oil.




I put it together to see how it felt, so the next pic is the current state. I'm planning on spraying it but I haven't decided the colour yet - probably light blue or black, and a bit relic'd as well. Also I'm going to get some older looking machineheads to replace these ones and a new nut (currently using a graphtech I had spare)




Well, it's in one piece, and it is ........ amazing! I absolutely can't resist playing it. The sound when unplugged just rings out of it like no other guitar I have. Every day I am picking this up instead of all my other (expensive!) guitars at the moment. I really don't feel that I want to pull it apart right now! The funny thing is, the action is pretty high right now as I haven't levelled the frets yet (need to buy tools when I get paid!), but it doesn't seem to bother me or affect my playing at all???

So, what colour? If I go black I may go for a white pearloid scratchplate. Probably going to swap out the pickups for something else eventually. Well, that's the story so far ....