Latest Build - A Jimmy Page Inspired Telecaster

[Keith VanDen Heuvel]

My latest built, a telecaster inspired by Jimmy Page's "dragon" tele from his early days with Led Zeppelin. I have working on it off an on for about two years, and I finally declared it done earlier this week. While not a true recreation of the fabled instrument, I endeavored to keep the psychedelic design as accurate a reproduction as I could. By capturing still frames from the Zeppelin DVD with footage of Page playing his tele, I was able to create full scale templates and trace the design on the wood using carbon paper and then repaint using acrylic paints. Since the paint had a great deal of relief, I decided to keep the finish pretty minimalistic and wiped on many layers of shellac since I knew I would not be able to wet sand the top. The rear is also finished in shellac and is sanded to a satin finish which is very nice to play. While it is a tele shape and it shares Page's artwork, there are many differences, such as a set neck and strat style body contours and wiring.

Specs:
Body wood - four pieces of northern white ash (makes for a heavy instrument)
Neck wood - laminated curly maple with walnut veneer stripes for contrast
fingerboard - Indian rosewood
pickups - hand would tele bride wound hot (~9k), middle pickup hand wound strat single coil wound with 43 AWG wire, neck pickup hand wound tele 43 AWG wound hot (~8.2k)
wiring - standard strat style wiring for pickup selection, but master tone control
Electrosocket jack cup with switchcraft jack
Wilkinson tuners
Bone nut
Medium StewMac fretwire
25.5" scale
Plexiglass pickguard with aluminum tape

[Art Davila]

Very cool is the pickgaurd done the same as the orignial? or did you just want shielding.

[Keith VanDen Heuvel]

Art,
Thanks for the compliment. The original had some kind of reflective material attached to the rear of the pickguard. Hard to say what it was, but it looks a lot like crumpled aluminum to me. I used metal tape, which is am quite sure is aluminum, that you can get a the hardware store for connecting ductwork and various ventilation tubes. It has a very strong adhesive and works pretty well for shielding. I bought a roll several years ago when I was building a different guitar and have used it around the house for various projects in addition to shielding instruments and I still have plenty left. The only trick is that you have to fold over the edges in order to get good electrical contact with the adjacent piece when used for shielding since the adhesive is non-conducting, and pretty thick in spots.

[Satnam Singh]

Nice!

Set neck, no truss rod access at the headstock. Where, then? In the neck pickup route?

[Keith VanDen Heuvel]

[quoteSet neck, no truss rod access at the headstock. Where, then? In the neck pickup route?][/quote]

You are correct. The access is at the neck heel - the pickguard must be removed to access it. My necks are pretty chunky so once the truss rod is set, I find that I have a pretty stable neck once the set up is completed. Still, a bit of a pain to get to. Thanks for looking!