Harrison Telecaster Assembly Part 2: Wiring

Wiring a Telecaster is pretty simple given it's just six parts: 2 pickups, a three way switch, tone and volume controls and a small capacitor. The first step is to mount the hardware on the control plate:

3-Way Switch and Pots Wired

Then follow one of the many wiring diagrams easily found online. Nothing much to it. It actually takes longer to cut and tin the five pieces of connecting wire than it does hook 'em all up.

Since I installed the bridge pickup in the previous episode, the next step is to mount the neck pickup in the pick guard. It works just like the bridge pickup - little screws (2 this time) and rubber tubing. Unfortunately, the pickup's wires have a long way to go and they're really not stiff enough to make it through the rather tight route in my Warmoth body. The solution:

Pulling the Neck Pickup Wires through

Slide a piece of guitar string through the route, crimp the pickup wires onto the right hand end, and gently pull 'em through. Once complete you end up with this:

Pickups & Jack Ready to Connect

From left to right, output jack, bridge pickup, neck pickup. You might find that the screws supplied with your pickups  are too long to fit in the Warmoth neck pickup route. They're made of pretty soft metal and easy to cut with regular diagonal cutters. I had to trim about an eighth of an inch off mine to allow the pick guard to lie flat.

Wiring Complete

Now we can wrap up the wiring. The black wires are the "ground" wires and the white and yellow wires are "hot". It's just a matter of soldering everything together.

First the hot leads (yellow and white) from the pickups get soldered to their spots on the 3-way switch. The the signal wire from the output jack to it's spot on the volume control and finally I attached the three signal grounds to the body of the volume pot and the remaining leg of the tone capacitor to the body of the tone pot. (Some builders like to run the tone cap. over to the volume pot so all the grounds are on one place.)

Note that I left the pickup leads full length. There's plenty of space in the control cavity and in the (highly likely) event I ever swap them out they'll be easier to reuse in another guitar that may have different routing.

Before drilling and screwing everything down I backed both controls off, carefully plugged in and gently tapped the pickups with a small screwdriver to make sure both were operating and the 3-way switch was correctly wired.

Next! Drilling, Neck and Final Assembly

Harrison Telecaster Assembly Part 1: Body Bits

A few weeks ago I spotted a really sweet rosewood Telecaster body at Warmoth. Expensive? Yep - $756.00. But it was a finished (gloss) body for just a couple bucks more than a raw body. Then I noticed that Warmoth no longer had rosewood as a body wood in their build to order system. So I checked in with "upper management", got the go-ahead, and ordered it along with the usual bits and pieces a guitar body needs.

So what we have there is the Warmoth body, Fender Vintage Telecaster pickups, and all the other body parts. All chrome, and yeah, because this is going to be a George Harrison style guitar a BWB pickguard that will cover up a big chunk of that beautiful body.

String Ferrules

There are two approaches to installing the ferrules. Tap 'em in with a hammer or heat them with a soldering iron and press them in. I decided to try the soldering iron technique but it turned out I ended up doing both.

Basically, you warm up a ferrule on your soldering iron for about 30 seconds

 and then press it into the hole with a little screwdriver

About half the time I found the ferrule cooled off quickly and I so used a block of wood and a small hammer to tap the ferrules into place.

Jack

The next bit was the jack. I used an Electrosocket. The first step of course is to solder on the signal and ground wires:

Then thread the wires into the body and align the screw holes parallel to the wood grain

More or less parallel

I had to gently tap the socket into the body because the factory finish had made the hole slightly smaller than the nominal diameter.

I didn't have a drill bit small enough to drill pilot holes so I lubed the little screws with soap and carefully screwed them in. These guys are very small and it would be easy to twist off a head. So it's important to be careful here. Add a drop of Loctite to hold the jack in place.

Bridge

The bridge is a little more complicated. The first step is to attach the pickup. It's the normal 3 screw Telecaster arrangement. I used Fender Vintage Telecaster pickups and they come with the little pieces of rubber tube and all the necessary screws.

Pop the screws into the bridge and slip the little pieces of tubing over them.

Then position the bridge pickup and tighten the screws until the tubing just begins to compress. Notice that the copper base plate has a wire connecting to the pickup ground. There's no need for an additional bridge ground since the screws contact both.

Thread the pickup wires through to the control cavity.

And screw down the bridge using the four included screws.

If you order your bridge from Warmoth it comes with a tiny Alen wrench to adjust the saddle height. Don't lose it.

Next: Neck pickup and control Wiring.

Telecaster Surgery - Installing a new bridge pickup

So, a couple years back, when I was in Minneapolis helping out Beth's sister while she had chemo, Guitar Center had, as is their wont, a President's Day Sale. Among the items on sale was an Ash body, natural finish "standard" Telecaster for $399. Now that's a pretty good guitar and it would have been fine as-is.

Micawber

But I happen to be a Rolling Stones fan. Not a fanatic, but a fan. And as a guitar player, somewhat fascinated by Keith Richard's collection of guitars, not the least of which are his modified Telecasters. Many have names and the most famous is probably Micawber, a '53 blond Tele with a Gibson "PAF" humbucker  at the neck and what is said to be a lap steel single coil in the bridge. It's further modified with a modern 6 saddle solid brass bridge, with the 6th string saddle removed to facilitate Keith's open G tuning. It is almost certainly wired "Broadcaster" style, a topic for another post (along with string gauges, capacitor selection, etc.)

Anyway...

So it wasn't long before I ordered a new pick guard and a Seymour Duncan '59 SH-1n pickup in a effort to reproduce the Micawber magic. It actually sounded pretty cool with that pickup and no other changes, though it did get muddy real fast if you backed down the tone control a little.

The obvious next step was a better bridge pickup. And it doesn't take long browsing the Tele discussion boards until you come to Don Mare. He makes his pickups to order and it might take as long as a month to get one. About a year ago I finally ordered one of his "Keefer" pickups, got it, and set it aside, meaning to install it "real soon".

One year later...

Ready for surgery

Okay then... First step, take off the strings. No big deal. You can see each saddle has it's own position. They have to come off so we can get at the 4 screws that hold the bridge plate in place.

Saddle Locations Marked

To make things a little easier when we put it back together I lifted the saddles with a pencil and slipped a piece of painters tape underneath, then pulled the pencil out and used it to mark where the saddles go. The screws and springs tend to wander, so they go on another piece of blue tape for safe keeping. I numbered them as they came off just to be safe...

Note "dog ear" and location  of the ground lug.

The bridge lifts off and the the screws holding the original pickup come out along with the plastic spacers all of which go on the blue tape for safekeeping.  It takes a moment to un-solder the pickup ground from the connector.

Control Plate w/ saddles in the background

Now for the control plate. Two more screws go to the blue tape and we're ready to un-solder the bridge pickup "hot" wire.  That's the white wire in the middle leading down to the control cavity. Using the original pickup as a guide, I cut the leads to on the Keefer to match and...

As they say in the automotive manuals "Assembly is the Reverse of Disassembly".  

There are a few tricky bits however. You'll notice that the pickup route has a little dog-ear at the lower right. That corresponds to the pickup screw where you'll remount the ground lug. You'll also want to tuck the pickup wires in as close to the pickup itself as possible - it's sort of a tight fit.

So, how does it sound? Darn good. The Don Mare "Keefer" is a good deal hotter than the original pickup and free of the infamous Telecaster "icepick" tone even with the tone control wide open.