Building an Esquire.

[Brian Wilson]

hello all.
my name is Brian Wilson and I have been bitten by the build bug. I posted my welcome and now lets get to the building.

first, I started with a few basswood blocks. very light and cheap enough that I won't be to bummed out if I totally screw it all up.

I ripped them down and ended up with six, 1 1/2'' pieces.

then set up my router and planed down my edges

glued them up and clamped them down

and totally forgot to take pictures of cutting it out! so lets move on to the router sled

[Brian Wilson]

the finished blank

next up was the cavities.

next up will be an arm relief and belly cut. more pics tomorrow!

[Warren May]

Nice clean routes. Good job.

[Brian Wilson]

Thank you Warren!
a brand new bit and the basswood get half the credit for those clean routes.
today I will be routing the rear control cavity. fingers crossed, little prayer to the woodworking gods that it comes out just as nice.
thanks for watching.

[Mark Swanson]

Good work so far!
I would suggest one thing. It is so easy at this point to go ahead and put in the front pickup that I would re-think your plan for a single pickup guitar! The telecaster front pickup sounds so great and is so useful that it would be a shame to not have one in there.

[Brian Wilson]

Thank you Mark!
The basswood body is kind of my experimental project. I have a dual rail bridge pickup that I want to play around with matched up with volume and tone only. I figure it will be easier playing with capacitor values and tones with a single pickup. plus I have always wanted an Esquire.

but do not worry sir. I have this for a proper Tele build:

a very nice spruce blank.
and a lovely bookmatched walnut top. BUT, one project at a time. the next project will hopefully get me through the cold Pittsburgh winter.
thanks for watching!

[Jedi Clampett]

I think it is a website in Germany called single coil .com, the website author writes for a guitar magazine, did 4 articles on custom esquire wiring. His own esquire uses a particular dimarzio pu that is a humbucker tele bridge pu and finds that coil cutting sounds great in single coil mode. Email me and I have said the articles to a word file I can send in email or check out the series of articles http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/11583

[Arnt Rian]

Good work so far!
I would suggest one thing. It is so easy at this point to go ahead and put in the front pickup that I would re-think your plan for a single pickup guitar! The telecaster front pickup sounds so great and is so useful that it would be a shame to not have one in there.

I agree, but lots of players never or very rarely use it. As I understand it, the Fender Esquire bodys have always been identical to the tele ones, and had a neck pickup cavity, they just didn't get the pickup. That's probably not so important for your instrument, but if you ever decide you'd like to put one in later, its easier to do the routing now.

Keep up the good work!

[John Kingma]

Good work so far!
I would suggest one thing. It is so easy at this point to go ahead and put in the front pickup that I would re-think your plan for a single pickup guitar! The telecaster front pickup sounds so great and is so useful that it would be a shame to not have one in there.

I agree, but lots of players never or very rarely use it. As I understand it, the Fender Esquire bodys have always been identical to the tele ones, and had a neck pickup cavity, they just didn't get the pickup. That's probably not so important for your instrument, but if you ever decide you'd like to put one in later, its easier to do the routing now.

Keep up the good work!

I agree. Rout for the neck pickup now even if you don't plan on putting one in. You never know what you may decide to do in the future.

[Mark Swanson]

Good idea, men!

[Jedi Clampett]

In the last year Premiere Guitar did a series of articles on wiring up an esquire that are worth read, they examine both the traditional circuit and the why of it and also a series of mods. I am now doing a guitar and a bass both single pickup and pushing the envelops on how far I can take a single pickup guitar.

[Jedi Clampett]

I forgot I posted the link already in above post, am having a senior moment.