Wednesday 10 September 2014

Black Ash Telecaster: Mock Build & Test Fit

Well I started a brand new project today - taking possession of a beautiful Ash Telecaster kit from Pitbull Guitars. This kit is their TLA-1 and the 4 piece body (thanks Tim!) that I've received sports some really lovely Ash grain. Just beautiful man.


The plan for this bad boy is a simple jet black finish, with the Ash grain still visible; both in a slight colour difference, and in the texture of the surface. I don't intend to pore fill at all, just colour and seal with Tru-Oil, so the natural Ash texture should come to the fore.



The mock-build went ahead smoothly. The neck was drilled and screwed in place without incident, and the strings are travelling well from the bridge up the neck to the nut. I'm not sure If I'm going to use a humbucker in the neck position or the traditional single coil and pickguard, so for the moment I'm assembling with a humbucker just to make sure the strings travel across the pole pieces correctly.


All in all I'm very happy with the quality of the kit and I can't wait to get started. The finish is going to be a very simple Colortone dye job with Tru-Oil as the sealing coat. It's been a while since I did such a simple Tru-Oil finish so I'm really excited about getting it done. From the other black Ash guitars I've seen, it should look killer when completed!

The next step is sanding, sanding, sanding and then a trace dye coat to make sure there are no glue marks or anything other blemishes. Onwards!!

No comments:

Post a Comment