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Saturday Morning
After a cup of coffee, it was time to continue and bring this project closer to completion.
I was still thinking about the playing neck tailpiece. I hadn't installed anything there yet, because I still was not quite sure what I wanted to do. I could use a "Les Paul" style tailpiece, I also had an odd vibrato unit that I could have used - adding a whole new dimension of weirdness to the instrument. After looking at how each of the options looked, I just decided to use pins like on the sympathetic neck, so it would have uniformity.

So this morning, I taped the area, measured and marked it, then drilled holes for the pins.


Removing the tape left nice clean holes again.


Installing the pins was identical to the previous pin installs, so no additional shots of that. I did want to point out that the holes in the pins are arched to follow the radius of the fingerboard.



While lying in bed, I was thinking that the zither pins are not designed for thicker strings, and I had a feeling I would have to drill the holes in the pins a bit larger. This was confirmed when the windings on the end of the E and A strings would not fit in the pins. I had to drill them a little larger.


And then I used a needle file to clean up any burrs to prevent premature string breakage.


All the strings are added and fit properly in the pins.


I have not mounted the "normal" tele bridge yet, I wanted to confirm everything lined up. This pic shows that they do, so I can now drill holes and mount this bridge/pickup assembly. Incidently, this is one of my favorite pictures - I like how the camera is reflected in the chrome and the plexiglass. If you look closely at the neck joint, you'll see the first casualty. Remember I said plexiglass is brittle? While aligning the neck, it must have put enough pressure on the corner and it snapped and went flying. I now have three options: I can try to reglue it back, refile and shape it so it curves just to the edge, or just leave it as is and chalk it up to being "naturally reliced."


On the peghead end, now that the strings are on, it was easy to find the correct place to mount the string tree. This is an old brass one I found in the parts bin.


Just realized it needs knobs. I didn't have any normal tele style ones, and too late to order some. I didn't like the look of white strat style knobs, but had these ones that I inherited from my brother. They are a bit smaller, but I have more, and should I decide to add another knob in the middle, it will look decent.


Action was terrible on the first fret - I had to cut the nut slots to the correct depth. So I measured the height of the frets with feeler gauges...


...then use the feeler gauges as stops so that I don't file the slots too deep.
[img]http://i525.photobucket.com/albums/cc331/rockndrtom/11filingnutslots.jpg[/img]

Now it's time to tweak and develop the buzzing bridge. This was the first idea, and it didn't quite work the way I hoped, so this has been abandoned.
[img]http://i525.photobucket.com/albums/cc331/rockndrtom/bridgeidea1.jpg[/img]
I next tried a solid piece of brass covering all the saddles, and it was better, but I couldn't set string height or intonation correctly. I have a few more ideas...