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Inspiration
The inspiration here came from a piece of wood I had. It was a very nice figured Walnut, which was thicker than I needed but it was too heavy and not wide enough for a body. So I had to cut it in half lengthwise and glue the two pieces together, matching up the grain and figure, to make a body blanc wide enough. It was still too thick and too heavy. I knew exactly what to do. I will make a Tele Thinline, hollow it out and use the extra thickness to cut a top slice from the body blanc. I will slice a pice off the top and after hollowing out the insides to make a Semi Hollow body, I will glue this slice back on the same piece of wood and use the slice as its top.
However, due to my band saw not having the height capacity to cut a board the full width of my body blank, I removed the upper blade support and guide piece to increase the saw's height capacity. This is not advisable for safety and for accuracy reasons. It was a precarious operation and I did not cut the slice off the body blank straight and what I got, after thickness planing and paralleling both sides, is something that would have been too thin for to use as the top for this body. I came up with the idea of laminating the not thick enough top to a piece of high quality plywood, which gave me the perfect thickness, after thickness sanding, for the correct top thickness. This was a very opportune mistake and I think the guitar resulted in being more interesting visually, giving the appearance that there is binding around the top. So it turned out impressive, as you can see.
This guitar is light weight, very resonant, retains all the essential Telecaster characteristics. It is much thinner in construction for the top, back and sides, as compared to a standard Fender Thinline Telecaster.
You can see it and hear it by going to the YouTube video of this guitar.
The pickups are of my own construction and are hand wound. The neck is a Charlie Christian type with Alnico 3 bottom magnets and thick 38 AWG wire and is a compete custom fabrication. The Bridge is a cross between a Telecaster pickup and a P90 with bottom Ceramic magnets and thin 43 AWG wire. The two pickups really complement each other. The neck is articulate, warm and 3 dimensional, while the bridge is bright and will rip your head off. Just as it should be.
Again the frets are tall and wide Stainless Steel and as always 24 of them to give a full two octave neck.
Hand fabrication of the Zachary Pickup 230319
