1977 Telecaster restoration - Part 3 - Body, electronics and assembly
Having the neck prepared, let's take a look at the things that still need to be done:
- Body hardware
- Electronics and pickups
- Body finish
And when everything is ready, time to reassemble and set action and intonation.
1. Body hardware
The bridge, the control plate, the pickguard, the jack-cup all needed cleaning and de-rusting in part 1 of the restoration project, I already explained the way I take care of rust on parts. Note that for the bridge, everything was rusted tight, so I hard to first get everything loose with some oil cleaning spray and soaking it in vinegar. It took some time, but the result is pretty nice:
Same goes for the other parts. It's getting together nicely.
2. Electronics and pickups
Trying to stay as close to the original as possible, we have the following challenges:
- Pots maintenance and cleaning
- Get a new 3-way switch
- Get the pickups repaired/rewound
It was amazing how much dirt came out of the potentiometers when spraying cleaning oil in them. At this point I was even concerned that the carbon brushes would be damaged and the ports would be broken. Nevertheless, I kept repeating the cleaning until no dirt came out of the pots anymore.
Ordered a new 3-way switch. The current one wasn't the original one and had a broken switch blade (and appeared shorted).
The last concern were the pickups: measuring them resulted in the 200Ohm resistance for the neck pickup and no reading at all for the bridge pickup. (the baseplate came loose of that one). So decided to take a chance on a repair of the pickups. To do this I contacted Armstrong Pickups in the UK.
Aaron was very helpful and reconstructed to pickups perfectly.Thanks!
3. Body finish
The body finish looked like something chemically reacted with it, causing brown stains in the finish. I really had to scrape it off (as well on the pickguard) and decided to add a clear coat on it. I didn't remove the old finish, so that the new clear coat could be removed if wanted.
That's the big advantage on Fenders (apart fro the early ones): the finishes are poly and thus resist almost and solvent based product. So adding it doesn't change anything to the guitar apart from the appearance.
4. Finishing up
in the end, I only had to add the small things that were missing (ferrules, strap buttons, ...) solder the electronics and put everything back together and set the intonation and action. Amazingly enough the original pots still work perfectly!
Let me know what you think:
- Body hardware
- Electronics and pickups
- Body finish
And when everything is ready, time to reassemble and set action and intonation.
1. Body hardware
The bridge, the control plate, the pickguard, the jack-cup all needed cleaning and de-rusting in part 1 of the restoration project, I already explained the way I take care of rust on parts. Note that for the bridge, everything was rusted tight, so I hard to first get everything loose with some oil cleaning spray and soaking it in vinegar. It took some time, but the result is pretty nice:
Same goes for the other parts. It's getting together nicely.
2. Electronics and pickups
Trying to stay as close to the original as possible, we have the following challenges:
- Pots maintenance and cleaning
- Get a new 3-way switch
- Get the pickups repaired/rewound
It was amazing how much dirt came out of the potentiometers when spraying cleaning oil in them. At this point I was even concerned that the carbon brushes would be damaged and the ports would be broken. Nevertheless, I kept repeating the cleaning until no dirt came out of the pots anymore.
Ordered a new 3-way switch. The current one wasn't the original one and had a broken switch blade (and appeared shorted).
The last concern were the pickups: measuring them resulted in the 200Ohm resistance for the neck pickup and no reading at all for the bridge pickup. (the baseplate came loose of that one). So decided to take a chance on a repair of the pickups. To do this I contacted Armstrong Pickups in the UK.
Aaron was very helpful and reconstructed to pickups perfectly.Thanks!
3. Body finish
The body finish looked like something chemically reacted with it, causing brown stains in the finish. I really had to scrape it off (as well on the pickguard) and decided to add a clear coat on it. I didn't remove the old finish, so that the new clear coat could be removed if wanted.
That's the big advantage on Fenders (apart fro the early ones): the finishes are poly and thus resist almost and solvent based product. So adding it doesn't change anything to the guitar apart from the appearance.
4. Finishing up
in the end, I only had to add the small things that were missing (ferrules, strap buttons, ...) solder the electronics and put everything back together and set the intonation and action. Amazingly enough the original pots still work perfectly!
Let me know what you think:
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