Recently I received the Harley Benton Telecaster kit for my birthday. This kit consists of every part needed to build your own telecaster and it looks like it is going to be a fun project! With a basswood body, this tele is going to be quite different to any other telecaster I've played before, but my Gretsch has a basswood body so I've no reason to doubt the tonal quality (yet!).
Obviously the base materials aren't going to produce a telecaster which is worthy of guitar of the year, however with my little bit of soldering experience and never having built a guitar before I think that I'm going to have fun putting it together, and I will of course write blog posts about my progress.
My plans at the moment are to paint the guitar and varnish the maple neck and headstock. Other upgrades of hardware and electronics might come later depending on my opinions of it once I've put it together. After some googling I found the website manchesterguitartech.co.uk which stocks a wide variety of lacquers specifically for guitar - the finish I think I'll go for is the sonic blue nitrocellulose lacquer, hopefully it will be recollective of the retro Fender finishes. I will also stain the maple neck to make it look a bit more professional.
All the pieces of the telecaster come fully cut and ready to put together except for the headstock which is an uncut rectangle shape. This is one area which I am slightly apprehensive about because woodwork is definitely not my thing. I expect I will attempt some sort of Fender-esque shape for my headstock and maybe even write my name on the top!
I will make sure that I write blog posts all about my progression on this project and maybe even record a few videos of what I do. Once I've lacquered the body and the neck I don't think it will be particularly difficult to assemble all the parts, especially because all the cabling is solderless! If you have any suggestions for my project please do let me know, I would love to fit some aftermarket pickups, and maybe even a new bride and tuners to aid in stability, so any advise for parts like that would be brilliant. In the mean time please do check out my Youtube Channel, and if you do enjoy reading The Pick and feel like you would be interested in supporting it financially, please do check out my Sponsorship Page. Any donations would be excellent and let me continue to work on The Pick.
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