Well, after sorting out my head about the blue paisley Jaguar, I turned my inactivity to the pine Telecaster body I've been meaning to do something with for eons, and finally decided what that will be like..
Firstly, it is a pine Tele body, following so far? I may have mentioned it.
Finish-wise, it is going to have a golden paisley on the sides and back, with a Copper leaf top. The copper leaf showed up this morning, and looks amazing and I'm really into the idea. Originally I was going to use copper sheet, but I like the idea of mixing the leaf and the fabric and this seems the perfect opportunity.
In terms of pickups - I'm going for an 'Esquire' approach, that is a single bridge pickup - I have a nice Bare Knuckle 'Brown Sugar' one which I've been saving for a special occasion, and then the wiring will do something clever with capacitors and resistors to give a few more sounds. I did think about a hidden neck pickup, but to be honest, I like the idea of an Esquire au natrel-like
The neck is one I picked-up a while back, maple on maple and unfinished. I was in two minds about giving this the traditional glossy tele garnish, but I don't think I will now. It looks rather beautiful as it is. The only downside is that I need to cut a nut slot, something I've been cowering away from as I've only ever done it on Cigar Box Guitars and when you are using a bolt for a nut, finesse is less of an issue. So loins need to be curdled in that direction. After that I've got Schaller tuners, and an ash tray cover for the bridge. I love those things, but haven't used one since The Paisley One all that time ago...
And there we are. I've been talking about my Lulu Copper Tops for a while, but the time is now.
Well, soon anyway.
Well, it was always going to be another day waiting for things to either dry or turn up on the J-Bird, so I figured I might as well put the Jangly One together as well as the Fat Pussy One.
As I may have mentioned, this little baby has got one wild paisley finish, and a couple of Kent Armstrong Hot lipstick pickups to turn it into something a wee bit special. On top of that, there are some Golden Gotohs to sort out the traditionally dodgy Dano tuning, and the first ever Jooky copper excursion, in the shape of a quite beautifully enameled scratchplate.
A Lulu Copper Top, as they shall henceforth be known.
The only downside with it at the moment is that it is more a pile of bits than a guitar right now, and so....I needed to do something about that.
Well, first things first I put the tuners onto the neck. Easy enough and amazingly I didn't even have to widen the holes or look for bushes to make them smaller. I must remember that, these sort of Gotohs fit a Dano. Lovely. I kinda expected everything to be none standard for this kiddy, so it was a nice surprise.
Tuners on, I figured I might as well put the neck on to the body. I'm never sure whether it makes more sense to sort everything out on the body first and join the two bigger bits together as late as possible, or if getting the neck on is as good a place to begin as any other. I do like to think that it starts to look guitar-like sooner rather than later, and if I'm going to break a screw in the neck I'd rather not have done everything else first and wasted my time.
Either way, I put the neck on; it still fitted, not having grown since I took it off the other week, so no big deal. It looks like a guitar now.
After that I remembered that I had forgotten to drill the screw holes in the scratchplate. Wasn't fancying this at all to be honest - drilling copper with a hand drill on a wobbly imitation Workmate, isn't any kind of cool, but it only needed three holes, thankfully, and I didn't kill myself. So happy days.
On the 'Full' Lulu copper tops - where most of the top will be covered with the shiny stuff, I'm planning to nail it on with copper nails, apart from of course any scratchplate areas which need to be removed. But this is Lulu-light, so it just needed screwing..
.
After that I couldn't hide from the wiring any longer, but thankfully even with my shaky mitts, it was only a couple of wires to de-solder and then re-solder to swap the pickups. Pity they aren't gold coloured and in fact they are almost exactly the same to look at as the originals, but there we are. Can't be helped. Maybe I'll touch them up with some nail varnish or something (now there's a thought).
Now for the bit I was really dreading. Trying to put the wiring together with the pickups, pots and everything else, back into the body.
As this is the first Dano I'd taken to pieces, it was a kind of a finger in the wind experience, working out how to even take it to bits. Obviously, being clever I took lots of fotos and notes along the way. Well, I would have if I had been clever. I had certainly meant to, but...well, things get in the way.
Anyway, once I'd managed to get the pickups thru the body and into place, luckily I remembered that I’d had to unscrew the bouncy spring things beneath them. On a normal guitar, you have normal springs, on a Dano they look like those amazing blades you see people running on in the Paralympics. Still, as it happens I think they are a great idea. and they went one without too much wobbling or finger-bleeding.
After that, the rest wasn't too bad. I did have to adjust the potholes slightly, which was a ball-ache, but there we are. Pretty much done.
Obviously, as per there are still things to do before I can put some strings on and give this baby a good strumming, but it's 90% there now. Just got to find out what I don't know I've done that I shouldn't have, I guess...
The Jangly One, uber cool, with the copper coloured top.
Sort of.
