Another *eight month* project: Greco Super Sounds Telemaster Custom

[DaddyDom]

Looks great, brazen even! lol.
What is the Tele pickup?
DD

[MattK]

Cheers! The pickup came from eBay - listed as "Electric Guitar Tele Pickup 1964 Bridge Pickup 9.2K 60S Hot Classics Alnico 3" which is a fair mouthful, but when it arrived I was pretty blown away by the quality. The only thing I thought might be lesser than a boutique Tele pickup was that the baseplate wasn't solid copper, but then I found out that the 50s originals were copper plated steel anyway, which makes sense for magnetic reasons. Beautiful quality, maybe a bit too hefty for the 350k pots, but sounds great rolled off a little. Shockingly cheap for how good it is (same for the bridge).

[BoringPostcards]

I really wish Fender went with that pickguard for the Telemaster.
It looks so much better than the cut-off tele/JM hybrid one.

[MattK]

My god, six months zipped past. Confession: I have never really used a router for proper work, but I had decided to use an existing pickguard as a template for cutting a JM pickup opening in the pickguard I have.
Used double sided tape and clamps to lock them in the right position:

Fired up the Dremel router base on my no-name Dremel knockoff with a trimming bit:

Got it close enough that it filed down OK and didn't do too much damage to the other guard:

Then put it together in excitement so I could install the pickup ...

... and realised I will have to rout the cavity a bit larger as well. Oh well, at least it's a start.

[MattK]

Now I've gone from "never used a router" to "used three routers" but there was a bit of a snarl, I had bought 6mm pattern bits for my mini laminate trimmer router but discovered that it uses 6.25mm (i.e. the collet won't lock on them!). So after slightly eating some of the pickguard instead of using it as a template, I had to freehand the route using outlines I scratched into the paint from the pickup cutout. This was terrifying.


Not too bad a result tho, seems OK for a first try freehand.

Hopefully I'll do some installation and wiring in the next couple of days.

[JSett]

I'd say that was more than successful!

I rout freehand almost all the time and it is indeed a stressful thing to do. I'm confident enough in my steady hands thanks to my day job but that first dip and cut always gets my heart beating

[Fiddy]

Looks great. Way better than I would have done.

[ohm-men]

Cool, did a very simelar thing last year.

[MattK]

Oh nice, colour combo works well and I'm guessing the JM pickup is fun!
So despite billing this as a decade long project, a mere 8 months after I started, it's DONE.
Pickup foam from some packaging I had:

Sketchy wiring job:

Put a cover on the pickup, neck back on:

and finished!

Plays pretty great (some things to iron out) and I love the JM pickup (which I think is an AVRI I bought cheap).
Now I've got a yin/yang thing going with Telemasters ...